


Silence Lay Steadily

by flailingthroughsanity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Coming of Age, Family, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Keith-Centric, Love, M/M, Matter of Life and Death, Nostalgia, Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Separations, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:33:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 54,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17406161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailingthroughsanity/pseuds/flailingthroughsanity
Summary: And, Keith thought, perhaps, all along, they’ve never really understood what they’ve lived through, or felt as if they’ve had enough time.A contemplation of love, friendship, family and what it means to be alive.





	1. Holding onto Gravity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaeseoksoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaeseoksoo/gifts).



> (this was supposed to be 20k shorter tbh)
> 
> So, I wrote this in three days so I'm sure I haven't edited it yet (which I will do after I've passed out lol), pretty sure I was inebriated on vodka throughout the entire thing, I also wrote this to Disneyland's Soundsational Parade Soundtrack because I was already emotionally volatile and I'm also doubly sure that I will need a tub of ice cream for the mental anguish. I'd like to reiterate that this is not a love triangle, but it will explore the concept of love. It was supposed to be a one-shot, but I felt like dividing it into two would give off a better effect especially on getting to part 2. Also, to give you guys a break from the anguish in this one. I honestly believe that this is the pinnacle of my Keith-centrism, and I'm sure I'll never be able to write a better Keith-centric fic than this one, maybe.
> 
> Thanks to [Jae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaeseoksoo/profile) for being my emotional punching bag, for letting me throw ideas around with them and for letting me heap mounds of angst and pain just to see if it _hurt_ the right way. Babe, this one is for you!
> 
> Heavily inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro's [Never Let Me Go](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6334.Never_Let_Me_Go). (Which is funny because I promised myself I'll never read the book or watch the movie again because it destroyed me, but guess what happened).
> 
> [[PLAYLIST](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl3x1Z8e2l8iUMZw9qMAnHc-7qtpH4VfH)]

PART I: HOLDING ONTO GRAVITY

* * *

 

The echoes of his footsteps were strangely heavy.

It was the idea that circulated – continued to circulate – in his head.

The waters were receding, and the sand trailed in their wake. A cold breeze swept through the plains, bringing a sting to Keith’s eyes. He blinked, bringing a hand to rub the itch away. In the distance, seabirds flew – crying out, tittering – their calls carried over the ebb and flow, riding along the surface waves crashing against the shoreline. Salt danced in the wind and kissed his skin.

He felt dry and sweaty, the salt air stuck to his skin and on his clothes. He didn’t really mind, though, as he continued to gaze across the expanse of the ocean. The caws of the sea gulls continued to circle about him, over the waves and the distant road behind him.

He squinted his eyes, trying to see past the line on the horizon – the edge that he’s never gone to. Somehow, he thought, if he could look clearly and see what was beyond it, he finally might have an answer. He had never really thought about it, about what waited behind that line – and he had never really given it the time of day to find an answer.

Maybe if he had, the questions in his mind would be quieter. Maybe if he head, he would not have needed to ask again and again.

The waves languidly crashed against the shoreline, the ripples brought to bear against his ankles. The sand beneath his bare feet prickled, they felt rough and coarse – slipping into the spaces between his toes. The warmth of the sea unfurled and faded at every breeze, a slight chill mingling until that, too, faded away. He dared not blink – not again – as he felt his hair pushed back by the wind.

Too many things faded far too quickly. Too many memories escaped far too cleanly.

The line at the edge of the horizon trembled, and if Keith’s thumbnail bit into the skin of his palm too deeply, he did not take notice. No, he continued to follow the line – and if he could close his eyes, he was sure he could hear his voice.

_Keith. Keith._

Keith heard his name – echoing over the waves – and he gasped, taking a step forward into the sea. He could imagine it now, see his face, remembering the taupe-lined smile and the ease with which he said his name. Keith.

The thing was – Keith had spent most of his life chasing after shadows, looking for answers that forever eluded him. When memories – the tiny, little fractured glass panes that began to form in his head after spending so long losing them – returned, they returned in rewritten spider-web trails and broken steel fixtures aligning themselves.

The waves continued to oscillate, locked in their cycle, and maybe that, too, was a question in of itself. Keith’s eyes stung, they ached to blink, but he kept them open and wide. The name that reverberated in his ears came again, growing louder with every repetition and he started to see it – now.

He started to see the old walls, beige in their prime. He started to see the red roof slates, the ochre-colored window frames and the memory of rain and hail creasing against the large wooden doors.

Somehow, the sea mingled with the image forming in his head – the familiar grass blades fluttering with every stormy June breeze, the dilapidated rope swinging an old tyre beneath a large oak tree, the rose-gold sunlight drifting through the dandelions spiraling across the field.

Maybe if he closed his eyes, he would see the amber glow of the hall lamps painting the edges of the window frames in warm light; the shadows in even lines, growing longer as they traveled further.

Maybe if he closed his eyes, he would _hear_ the tell-tale chatter of children, their laughter echoing against old arches and sensibly shut doors; the clacking sound of their guardians’ shoes trailing after.

Maybe if he took a step forward, the sea beneath his feet would turn into the sharp cut of the grass, the sea salt against his skin turning into autumn raindrops filtered through the leaves of the trees, the wind whistling in his ears into distant voices – bright, high-pitched giggles and laughter.

He would have taken that one step farther in, and amongst the voices – there would be one, one he can never forget, and one he can never unhear. The face in his head grew clearer, and he started to see the tan skin and the gentle eyes and the forgiving smile, and Keith felt his own lips curling up.

There he stood, and he realized.

 _I am home,_ Keith thought. _I am home._

He stood in wonder of the thought.

The beige walls were lined in afternoon sunlight, and the distant glades beyond. The image was so clear, so detailed that he smelled the earth after the rain, and the musk of the old tyre by the oak tree, and the faint sweat in little children’s bodies after a day of play. They brimmed with heart and soul, they echoed with devotion and Keith could not help the hand reaching up his chest.

The cloth in his bunched-up hand was irrelevant; he stared forward and breathed salt in and autumn out. A breeze buffeted at him, and the waves turned into old, dead leaves spiraling in the air.

His name carried over, again and again, through the thick walls and the heavy roof slates and the locked doors. It danced and curled through the laughter, and the whine of the tightrope swinging an old tyre, and the creaking of the branch holding it aloft and the whistle of the grass blades.

Steps grew closer, and the smile that grew on his lips felt tight as the multitude of voices turned to one – and one only. The realization hit with a jolt, a thunderous clap and with the gentleness of the water against his ankles.

 _I am home,_ Keith realized. _I am home._

Now, to climb.

* * *

Edo had been home to Keith ever since he was old enough to understand what the word meant. A child at that young an age never really thought about what most words could mean, or the distinction that came the moment they grew up. Looking back, Keith could not blame himself. Things change when you have grown up – when you have come of age. Nothing really stayed the same, he now realized that, but epiphanies never crowded the minds of eight-year old boys.

Home meant the ever-green plains, their blades tall enough to tickle his ankles if he didn’t pull them high enough, and he remembered the gentle swish against his skin as he ran through them. Home meant the wooden panels of Edo, the water-washed paint growing lighter in the morning, and the tall boulders that stood next to the oak tree with the swing. Home meant the footpath trailing east, farther out, to the distance where they were not allowed to go to.

Home meant the certain sense of longing – in the sense of so much infinity – when he stood in the middle of the field and looked west. The endless green, the grass blades traveling ever reaching. He remembered himself, barely nine, and remembered the joy and the mysticism of so much expanse, so much possibility.

Distantly, he heard the laughter of his classmates, trailing quietly against the wind. Even the slight creaking of the swing twinkled in between, louder if he stood still enough to listen. There was a tap against his shoulder, and Keith angled his head, not looking away from the green fields.

“Race you back to the foyer?” A voice broke through his thoughts, a familiar timbre that had Keith turning. Shiro grinned at him, cracked lips up in a wide smile and dirt against his cheek. Dark hair ruffled against his forehead, the wind pushing to cross them.

Keith remembered Shiro.

Keith remembered the taller boy, with a smile open enough that hid the silver of his tongue. Taller than most of them, Shiro had been bright and dazzling. Keith remembered him loving the physical classes more than what Keith could ever appreciate them for – tan skin no longer a stranger to the sunlight, the occasional chill of the breeze and the dirt that stained Shiro’s socks as he ran across the fields.

Keith never really liked running. The irony was always in hindsight.

Shiro stood there, smiling at him and Keith had taken him – the afternoon light painting shadows against his face, one taupe eye lighter than the other. Keith never really liked running, but he loved to compete. He didn’t answer Shiro, but turned on the spot and took off, sprinting ahead.

Shiro shouted – “no fair, Keith!” – and Keith laughed as the other tried to catch up to him. The wind pushed at him with every step, his hair falling into his eyes but he shook them off, the grin seared on to his face. In the distance, he could see his other schoolmates looking to them at the sound of the commotion. The boys cheered them on, crying out their names. _Come on, Keith! Don’t lose to him, Shiro!_

Their names echoed into the dark grey sky, punctuating the clouds heavy with coming rain. Tumbling over their cries, he heard the reprimands of the guardians. Keith hurtled up the stone steps, and his knees burned as he dropped to the wooden panels of the foyer. Shiro crashed into him, seconds after.

He remembered the pain ghosting the exhilaration and the heaviness, dotting the exhales of his breathing. Half-laughing, half-groaning as he slumped against the floor, sweat-laden skin sliding against the wood and Shiro was above him, no better. He breathed just as fast, not bothering to carry his own weight as he laid against Keith.

The cheers of the other students traveled farther until it trailed into the distance, and Keith grumped as he pushed Shiro away. The other rolled over, content to lie on the ground. The sheen of sweat glistened faintly in the light, stuck to Shiro’s forehead in clumps and there was a wide grin on his face.

“You suck.” He growled, voice trying to sound ferocious. The intent was lost in the upward tilt of his lips. Keith laughed in between pants, sitting up to wipe the sweat on his face against his arm.

“You’re just jealous you couldn’t catch up.” Keith retorted, and he laughed again as Shiro leaned close to push at him. He angled back and the other missed. Shiro overextended his reach and fell into Keith, again. Their knees were scraped, red, and Shiro’s elbow had a gash but none of that mattered – Keith laughed again, Shiro staring at him a bit before following after.

They stayed that way — for a moment, or maybe even for far longer than a moment. Keith moved a bit to the side as Shiro climbed the steps, flopping down beside him. He didn’t smell particularly nice, already inching off to the more uncomfortable side of gross but Keith doesn’t move away.

Shiro’s arm dug into his as they both leaned against each other, facing the slowly darkening sky. It was quiet between them, but not awkward. Never awkward.

That time seemed long ago, now. There were other moments, other times in his life that felt like they’ve been spun from the same thread as the present, crisscrossing into his memories like mingled wine, heady with fondness.

This time of scraped knees and gashed elbows, of grass blades tickling ankles and calves, wooden panels under their hands and the easy silence between them — all this, Keith remembered in little sporadic bubbles. A time he can never return to.

It’s funny how, in the spaces between retrospect and the future, the minute occasions that never seemed to matter the moment they had happened grew in importance once they were over. Keith had never realized, not now and not then, those moments with Shiro — the easy smiles and the dirty arms and the off-white socks turned grey in the dirt, laughing as they watched classmates play and make fun of each other.

It’s funny how, as he got older and older, those moments had started to lose significance — had lost their charm and gleam, and it was only when he got to the juncture, to his own crossroads, that he remembered them for how precious they were. Now, he remembered them with frightening clarity — irony was always in hindsight.

“Tomorrow,” Shiro spoke, and Keith turned to him. He watched the curl of dark hair against his forehead, the ends gliding against the slope of his nose. Shiro’s eyes — dark taupe painted amber in the fading sunlight — pointed ahead. Keith, always late in the uptake of how things were, noted that Shiro looked his age in that profile, a weathered calm curtained in the downturn of his lashes. “Tomorrow.”

“What about tomorrow?” Keith asked, wrapping his arms around his knees. The end of a breeze always preceded a chill, and Keith leaned his chin against his arm. Shiro’s eyes studied him, and Keith refused to look away.

“Tomorrow, I’ll finally get ahead of you.” He answered, and Keith was silent. Shiro’s response was pensive, almost quiet, and there was no competitive glint to his eyes. He continued to examine Keith before a smile started to grow on his lips. “You’re not leaving me behind.”

Keith cocked his head, nodding. At the time, the seriousness of Shiro’s answer had pulled the same from him. It had seemed like a fitting response, when Shiro answered as if he was testifying, and Keith the holder of the gavel. It would have been forgotten, another hair-thin fracture interlaced with more fractures on a mirror made of broken parts.

Keith had thought about it, idly. He chalked it off as one strange moment, unimportant in the history between them.

They continued to sit quietly by the landing of the foyer, watching the rose-gold light turn to translucent grey, their sweat long dry and the ache in their wounds long gone. It was later that Keith realized, when Mr. Holt found them, just how much time had passed by.

With a stern frown, Mr. Holt gave them detention for their rough play, pulling them by the collars of their shirts and shepherding them inside. Shiro made a face at him, no trace of his earlier seriousness, and Keith grinned back, conspiratorial.

They’re given lines, and Keith was a bit surprised at it. It was his first time to be given detention, unaware of what it meant. Mr. Holt wrote the line on the board and settled on a nearby chair, crossing a leg over another.

“Well,” he gestured with a hand, an expectant brow raised above the rim of his glasses. Dark chestnut hair gleamed black in the setting sunlight. “Get to it, boys, or no supper for the both of you.”

The idea of no supper propelled Keith to grab his piece of chalk, Shiro following suit. Things were easy, when a threat of that sort could make anyone take their punishment, but things rarely went easy — as Keith would later come to understand.

The first sound of the chalk against the board, that moment that was barely even a second — when the friction created a sound far sharper than anything he’s ever heard of, before he started copying the lines. Another followed, and Keith turned to Shiro — who finally started on his own lines.

Though his hand slowly grew stiff, repeatedly writing ‘I promise to obey the house rules of Edo, to uphold the integrity of her students and to be men and women of goodwill.’ line after line, Keith didn’t really mind. He ended the line just in time for Shiro to start another, and the sides of their curled fists would come together, before going separate ways.

Shiro crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out every time it happened, and Keith bit his lip, trying to stop the smile from growing even larger, not when Mr. Holt continued to watch over them from the back. They would laugh about it — quite later, when the lights had gone low and sleep had entered the walls of Edo — but, for now, Keith continued to hide his smile as Shiro tried to make him laugh.

* * *

Perhaps, Keith thought.

Perhaps, Keith should have held on — tighter, closer.

Perhaps, Keith thought, Shiro should have done the same.

Perhaps — had they known what was to come, they could have sooner realized how much they would lose.

* * *

Nights at Edo were always quiet — or as quiet a school can be when students just on the edge of puberty lived on its premises.

The classes were shared, between the male and female students, handled by the same guardians they’ve had when they were young. The dormitories were separate, though, and it was no surprise — even now — that the boys’ dormitory was always on the rowdier side. Maybe, Keith thought, the girls’ dormitory were just as chaotic as his, but they hid it better.

It was hard to hide three students engaged in a pillow fight, after all. Not when the cotton inside the pillows had come flying out.

Still, when it grew late, the entire house seemed to fall into a contemplative silence. Keith half-wondered if he was just overthinking it, shifting in his bed. He was tired — that, he was sure of. For some reason, though, his eyes refused to shut and that tell-tale ebb of sleep refused to come.

He shifted again, turning the other way. Light cut in through one of the windows whose curtains weren’t closed. He could see, dimly, the sleeping faces of his other classmates. There was Hunk near the other wall, his large form distinct even in the dark because of the yellow handkerchief he refused to unbind from around his forehead, and Lance next, limbs in disarray.

Across his own bed, one of the older boys — Adam — slept peacefully. Keith breathed out noisily, sitting up and leaning against the headboard. It was hopeless, he couldn’t fall asleep.

He could pull out the small books under his bed, or the pad of paper he has stowed away by the end table and draw but that would mean turning the light on.

A shifting sound has him turning to his side, and Keith found Shiro eyeing him. The other raised his head, mouthing words. _You okay?_

 _Can’t sleep._ He mouthed back, Shiro nodding after. He watched the other boy sit up in his bed, raising a hand to rub at his eyes. Keith cocked his head, leaning against his pillow. He watched the light, or whatever small part of it was able to cross the expanse of the floor from the window, play against the blankets by the bed’s edge.

Shiro turned to him, looking pensive for a bit, before he pulled the covers away. Slowly, he turned to his side and placed his feet on the wood, and Keith frowned at him, unsure of what was happening. He wasn’t really thinking of getting up and going around, right? Detention would be the last of Shiro’s worries if the guardians found out.

“What are you doing? Keith whispered, trying to make sure none of the other boys could hear him. Shiro didn’t answer, tiptoeing the spaces between their beds, the stars on his bright blue pajamas distinct in the darkness.

A hand on Keith’s bed, Shiro sat by the edge. Keith pushed himself up and moved back, trying to make sure the frame didn’t creak. It took a while, Shiro quietly grunting with effort until he managed to get into Keith’s bed.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” He spoke, lowly, into Shiro’s ear. The bed was alright, for Keith’s size, but with the two of them in it, they were forced to press up against another. Shiro leaned back against the pillow, his shoulder digging into Keith’s collarbone.

The bed was too small, he soon realized, and Keith turned on his side, with Shiro following. They ended up facing each other in the dark, legs entwined under the blanket, avoiding the night chill.

“We’re too old to do this.” Keith started, trying to make out Shiro’s eyes in the shadow of his form. The light glinted off him, outlined in faint white. Shiro shifted, and Keith felt his hand rest against his between them.  There was no space left, and Keith let it be.

“Too cold.” Shiro answered, and Keith rolled his eyes – knowing Shiro couldn’t see it in the dark. Typical of him.

“That’s because your pajamas are so thin.” Keith retorted. Shiro turned his head a bit, and Keith felt the pillow under him shift.

“They looked cool.” The corner of Keith’s lips quirked up on hearing Shiro’s whispered response. “I guess.”

“You always get the stars.” Keith noted, remembering the mug Shiro had in the drawer of his end table. They all had mugs – their little cups, the guardians would say – and Shiro would always bring his to breakfast, the little white mug with a chip on one side. Gold-lined stars littered across the sides, some scratched off over time.

Shiro took a while before he answered, Keith almost thought he fell asleep. He breathed in, before responding to Keith. “It’s a reminder.”

Keith leaned closer, almost not hearing his words. “Of what?”

He felt Shiro’s hand move, and Keith settled his over his side. Shiro was drawing a star against the cover. “What I wanna be when I grow up.”

Keith grinned, poking his friend in the side. “You want to be a star?”

Shiro’s hand paused, and there’s a moment of silence that had Keith squinting before he heard a choked-in chuckle. A hand settled on Keith’s side and pinched him, causing him to pull Shiro’s hand away. “No, doofus. I want to be a spaceman.”

“A space man?” Keith asked. “You mean an astronaut?”

Shiro nodded. “Space man sounded better.”

Keith shook his head, returning to his former position. He remembered, now with surprising clarity, how Shiro used to have this little magazine under his bed covers. One of his earnings from the potluck – and he was always so proud of it. It was a comic book, something about stars, and the main character was a guy named Luke. Luke wielded a glowing blue sword, and he used it to fight monsters and save a princess from outer space.

Shiro would often read it, in the early morning before breakfast, always the first one up before the others. Keith would wake up after, bleary eyes opening to find Shiro sitting up in bed, quietly reading aloud the lines from his comic book. Keith would settle himself, not moving and not saying a word, content to watch his best friend give voice to Luke, and a robot who would help him save the princess, and the bad guy – Vader.

Shiro would raise a hand while reading, flinging it around like he was swinging a sword. When he got to the really good lines – _Use the Force, Luke. Let go of your senses! –_ he would put his hand up like he was about to catch something in it, his face would get this scrunched-up expression as if doing so was tiring and he would make whooshing sounds.

At this, Keith would snicker a bit too loudly, and the comic book would fall from Shiro’s hand in surprise, wide taupe eyes and red across his cheeks.

“Like Luke?” He prodded, and Shiro’s head turned up, looking away from his hands. Somehow, his eyes have adjusted and he recognized Shiro looking back at him. “Luke Skywalker?”

Shiro turned in bed, until he’s leaning on his back. Keith adjusted, allowing himself to mold against his best friend’s larger form. Shiro’s hair tickled at his nose, but Keith ignored it and settled his chin against Shiro’s shoulder. “That would be awesome, right?”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed. There would be nothing cooler than going to space, fighting bad guys with your laser sword and rescuing princesses. Shiro seemed to fit that, he thought. His friend was tall and big, and always stood up for him when the other boys got rowdier. He would fit. “You’d be Shiro Skywalker.”

“What about you?” Shiro asked, turning again. He always shifted in his bed. Keith hummed.

“What about me?”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Shiro clarified, and Keith shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, but Keith felt Shiro’s gaze on him – heavy. It was true, though. Keith had no idea what he wanted to be – and, for some reason, the realization was surprisingly daunting. If he scoured his mind and his memories for something he would want to be, he would come up with nothing…except for one thing.

He wanted to be wherever Shiro was. That was it.

Shiro turned to him, at that, and his nose rubbed against Keith’s chin. “You could be Han. Keith Han.”

Keith pursed his lips. “Who’s Han?”

Shiro’s elbow gently prodded into his stomach, and Keith poked him back. “He’s Luke’s best friend, dummy. Like you’re my best friend.”

He bit his lips, before nodding. Smiling. “Okay.”

Shiro raised a hand, curled into a fist and Keith reached up to bump his against it. “Okay.”

They didn’t talk, after that. They settled on the best, and Keith finally felt the heavy pull of sleep. He didn’t remember Shiro leaving the bed, only pressing his nose against the back of his head. When he woke up, hours later, rose-gold dawn creeping through the thin drapes, Shiro was back in his bed, reading from the same comic book and making the same sounds.

Keith smiled, and watched.

* * *

Days at the house always started with breakfast, but Keith remembered the morning assembly that happened every Monday of the week. He remembered all of them, dressed in their best clothes, neatly-combed hair and crisp collars and all. Keith’s collar would chafe at his skin, and he’d always raise a hand to pull it away from his neck.

Shiro would tell him to stop, and Keith would retort that his collar was askew.

The director of Edo – Mr. Iverson – would open the morning assembly. Keith remembered Mr. Iverson – he was one of the tallest people Keith knew, and he frowned a lot as he stood by the podium and looked them over. He never told Shiro how Mr. Iverson used to creep him out. He didn’t know how or why – was it the way he looked at them, really looked at them as if he could see through them? Was it because his voice was gruff, and he didn’t smile a lot? Was it because they only saw him during that day of the week, and he’d be gone the rest?

Keith didn’t know – at least, not then. Things were always clearer in retrospect.

Most of the morning assemblies always consisted of Mr. Iverson talking about the school, about the guardians and the students. Half the time, what he discussed went over Keith’s head. None of it really mattered, not that much at the very least, to Keith. He would sit at the left side of the hall, on one of the pews close to the front and Shiro would always sit next to him.

“Great, he’s talking about Mrs. H again.” Shiro commented from beside him, and Keith raised a brow. Mrs. H was the school owner, if he remembered correctly. “He always talks about Mrs. H.”

Keith shrugged, not really listening to Mr. Iverson’s words either. The director’s droning voice lingered across the hall, and Keith looked down when he felt Shiro’s hand crawl over his. A tap to his thumb, and a look up at his best friend beside him, Keith saw mischief in his eyes.

Rolling his eyes, Keith relented and let Shiro lace their fingers together. A tap to his thumb from Shiro’s thumb, and they began a thumb war. Keith continued to face Mr. Iverson, but his eyes fell to the joined hands by his lap as he avoided Shiro’s thumb. A tap to the side has Shiro winning, and he chuckled to himself.

It seemed his chuckles carried over the pews, and one of the older boys at the front pew – Adam – turned to them and frowned. Keith bit his lip as Shiro grinned, and looking up, found himself caught in Mr. Iverson’s gaze.

He stilled, mirth dying as Mr. Iverson continued to look at him and there was that frown on his face, his brows like hackles in flight furrowed in consternation. He kicked Shiro’s knee under the seat, and felt him still after a second.

Were Mr. Iverson’s eyes always that cold? Keith stopped himself from shaking in his seat and ducked his head.

The hush that fell over the hall eased when Mr. Iverson continued his address. He started to speak of two students who found it amusing to injure themselves while playing. A few faces around turned to look at them, and Keith felt his face redden. Shiro was looking at his shoes, knee jumping for a moment as Mr. Iverson spoke, warning them against rough behavior. He ended the address the way he always did:

“Students of Edo are special. Remember that.”

* * *

Students of Edo were special. Keith didn’t really understand what that sentence meant, before. He had chalked it off to Mr. Iverson’s weird way of boasting, or just as a contemptuous reminder for that afternoon where he and Shiro had injured themselves while running. He had thought about it, for some time, believing that what Mr. Iverson meant was because they were raised altogether. For the years that followed since that incident, Keith had held on to that belief. He was, after all, thirteen and a lot older and wiser than a nine-year old.

Edo’s students were special. They were raised in the school’s dark-colored halls, grew up on wooden floors and sensibly shut doors and sturdy ceilings. They slept in the same rooms, studied in the same places and sat next to the familiar faces they knew every day of their lives – chairs, beds and pews lined together.

Classes were taught by the guardians – their teachers who helped raise them. Keith never really thought much of them, seeing the same faces all his life.

History was taught by Mr. Griffin, tall and dark-haired, edged with a sharp smile. Literature with Mr. Holt, who was more irritable than not, always looking for an excuse to send any of his students to detention. Ms. Ina – because her last name was too long and complicated for Keith to wrap his tongue around it – taught Arts, and she loved plays, and it was almost always everyone’s favorite class, to pretend to be someone for a short time. Mr. Ryan – everyone called him Mr. K – handled Sports, and made sure that they all returned to their dormitories exhausted.

They were the guardians, and it always seemed to Keith (even then) how they aged with Edo, like her eternal retainers. Lesson plans changed just as many times as the seasons did, their subjects becoming more and more difficult over time. All changed, save for the one thing: the guardians were always the same.

Even when Mr. K’s booming laughter slowly faded as the years went by, as the lines under Mr. Holt’s eyes grew darker and deeper, and Ms. Ina’s plays became somber. They were always the same, never changing.

It wasn’t until now that Keith realized that Edo – his home, Shiro’s home, theirs – was built on the souls of her guardians.

* * *

That spark, however, wouldn’t come to realization until a few years later, in a cold and rainy November day. No, that was for the future. For now, it was spring – and the sunlight bled into the courtyard and halls merrily. For now, the birds sang in their nests, and the leaves that fell were green-yellow instead of brown. The old tyre swung cheerily, to the laughter of students, and the oak tree’s branches continued to hold it up. These little seasons, spring and summer, were littered with the fondest memories Keith’s had in Edo. Funny how he forgot about them, growing up, only to remember it when it was all too long gone.

One stood out, for him, and Keith remembered the feel of the grass under him as he sat by the shade of the oak tree, the parapets beyond the footpath gleaming white under the afternoon light. Some of his other classmates were in the shade, too, and Keith remembered noting the differences in how they looked, compared to so long ago.

Lance was taller now, lankier. Hunk still wore that same handkerchief around his forehead, but his hair grew over it. Nadia had her hair in braids and Keith recalled how hard she tried to convince Pidge, one of the younger ones, to stop reading her book and let Nadia do her hair. Shiro flopped beside him, and Keith could feel the sunlight heat off him in waves. “Where were you?”

“Bedroom. Adam wanted to borrow my comic book.” Shiro answered, pointing a thumb to Adam, who settled on the other side of the tree, just in distance for Keith to turn to. The older boy gave him a small smile and proceeded to start reading Shiro’s comic book.

It was old now – the ends of the pages curled in so much use – but Shiro still thumbed through it every now and then, despite the other comic books he’s gotten.

“Will you be getting another one for this year’s potluck?” He asked, and Shiro shrugged.

“Maybe? I haven’t started with mine, though. D’you know what you wanna do?” He asked, and Keith hummed.

The potluck was one of the few things that Edo students could agree on – Keith knew, especially looking at Pidge getting irritated at Nadia’s insistence. Every year, at the end of summer when autumn was just starting to crawl into the horizon, the school director, Mr. Iverson, together with the guardians and the school owner, Mrs. H, would hold a contest. The students were given half the year to make something – anything they want to make, a painting, a toy, anything that they could imagine – and during the potluck day, they would display their little creations and Mrs. H would look at every single one.

Keith recalled how she looked, though it was fragmented and echoed – she never went to the school long enough for any of them to remember her exactly how she was. Nobody ever came to the school, except for Mrs. H, and they would see her black car drive into the field from the distance, past the parapets. She would then step out, her grey hair neatly tied into a bun, and she would always wear the same purple blouse. When Mrs. H was around, everyone put on their best clothes and stood in the hallway, greeting her in tandem.

She never answered, though. She would look at them – each one of them – in the eye, smile and turn away.

Every potluck, Mrs. H would look at every display and she would smile, make “ooh” sounds and she would always leave a bronze coin in the little bucket next to their creations. It was the potluck token, and after the display was over, they could trade their little bronze coins for something else. In Mr. Iverson’s office, there would be a table where there were toys, books, _comic books_ , and so many things that they could trade their token for.

Last year, Keith traded his token for a pair of plastic bracelets – red and black. They seemed unimpressive, on first look, but in the dark, they glowed. He wore the red on his right hand, and gave the black to Shiro.

Shiro wore it on his left, and when Keith gave him the bracelet, he let Keith read his new comic book first.

“I guess I’m gonna draw again.” Keith answered, not really sure what to draw. The year before, he had painted Edo during dawn – with a mish-mash of watercolor and acrylic. It wasn’t pretty, but to a twelve-year old, the inundation of bright reds and yellows were simply dazzling. Shiro had tried to go for a Luke Skywalker figurine, made from broken Popsicle sticks and glue – Keith helped him paint, of course.

“You always go for drawing. Don’t you wanna try something new?” Adam piped up, from beside them, and Shiro nodded, agreeing. Keith hummed, unsure on what to try if not for drawing. “Hey, Nadia, didn’t you write a song for potluck last year?”

Nadia turned to them, combing her braided hair over her shoulder. She frowned a bit, before nodding. Adam closed the comic book in his hands and cocked his head. “What was it about, again?”

Red bloomed across her features and she crossed her arms. “Not your business. Why you asking?”

“I was curious!” Adam insisted, and Shiro grinned from the side. Keith hid his smile behind his hand as he leaned on his knees. The breeze picked up, the grass swaying wildly, and the yellow flowers by the garden bent along.

Pidge, taking Adam’s distraction of Nadia as her chance, quietly stood and sat next to Keith. He heard her muttering to herself, before returning to her book.

“Good?” He asked, half-turning to her. Pidge jumped a bit, large lenses glinting in the sunlight. She nodded, after a moment. On the other side, he heard Shiro join Adam.

“What’s it about?” Keith asked again, curious. It was a really thick book, perhaps five – maybe even ten times thicker than any of Shiro’s comic books. She didn’t answer, not immediately, and he took that as his cue to keep himself quiet. She curled a page in and closed her book, carefully showing the front part to Keith.

William Golding’s _Lord of the Flies._

“It’s about these kids who get stuck in an uninhabited island.” Pidge raised a hand to push her hair away from her eyes. “Nobody knows what’s on the island, and they gotta survive. They think there’s a monster out there who’s going to kill them, but it’s not real. They’re just making it up because they’re scared.”

Keith frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a happy book.”

Pidge didn’t respond, opening the book again. Keith settled on his side, watching Nadia talk about her song during the potluck last year but he wasn’t really listening to her. Shiro started talking about his Luke Skywalker figurine, before a thought came up and he’s turning back to Pidge.

“What happened to the kids?” He asked, watched as Pidge turned a page before looking up.

Her lips puckered together before she answered. “Nothing too good. They started fighting each other and one of them gets killed.”

“Why? What made them start fighting each other?” Keith urged.

Pidge shrugged. “Who knows? Why do we always fight each other? Maybe they thought they knew the best way to live on the island. Maybe they realized it was too difficult. Or, maybe they were just scared. That’s usually it. Always scared.”

Keith kept quiet as Pidge returned to her book. Then, he had taken that as more of his strange classmate’s unusual ramblings. Still, her words stayed with him and he spent most of his afternoon thinking about that, and the book and the boys stuck on the island.

He wondered how it would feel like, to be stuck somewhere inescapable. He had never known anything other than Edo, and he wondered how an island would be like. He knew what it was, what the word meant – a body of land surrounded by water on all sides – but to have so much limit, so much enclosed space, and knowing no matter where he turned, there was no way out.

He had no idea how he would feel – frightened, that was sure, but other than the fear, what else was there to feel in such a situation? Would feelings help in ensuring he survived? Keith knew the general feelings – knew excitement and fear, knew happiness and anger, and occasional sadness that went his way. He knew them the way he knew his classmates, associated Shiro with happiness and excitement, for that matter.

He guessed that he’d be fine, if he were stuck on an island with Shiro. They’ve always been by each other’s sides since they knew what best friends meant, and he knew he’d never get into petty arguments with Shiro. Keith thought that they would be able to handle it quite pleasantly, too, and if they kept their heads together, they would make it.

He thought of his other classmates, imagined himself on an island with Shiro, but also with Adam and Nadia and Lance and Hunk and Pidge. Lance would pick a fight him, maybe, they’ve never seen eye to eye on most things but Hunk always ironed things out. Pidge was too quiet, kept to herself too often – she’d never be able to lead a group, even though she’s read a book about it. She would be content to let someone take charge and follow. Nadia and Adam argued too much, teased each other too much and he guessed they’d fight over who would be leader.

Shiro often flittered between Adam and him, and Keith knew he would take Adam’s side if it came between him and Nadia. Keith was different, though. He was always fine with waiting at the sides and letting things play out, but as long Shiro was there, he wouldn’t have a problem. That, he knew with certainty. Ironies, hindsight and retrospect.

Keith thought more and more of the book, _Lord of the Flies,_ and studied the outline of Shiro’s back in the spring afternoon. Edo stood, her walls sturdy, surrounded by endless green fields and parapets on all sides – a little island of their own.

* * *

But their island wasn’t haunted by a made-up monster. No shadowy creatures roamed their halls, lurking in the dark crevices and corners that he didn’t really like to look at. No, what shuffled across the wooden panels of their halls were the quiet chatter of the students, the guardians talking to each other – a scuffle here and there.

Mr. Holt was at the front of the classroom, at the teachers’ desk, and he was writing something on his notebook – perhaps the lesson for the next day. He had finished his lecture early, and had given them free reign as long as they weren’t too noisy.

Keith was at his armchair, pocketing his notebook and Shiro turned to him in his seat. The rest of their classmates turned to each other, and Keith ignored most of the noise. “Hey.”

He looked up, humming at Shiro. His best friend had a curious gleam in his eyes. “What?”

Shiro looked around, sneakily, and leaned close. Beside them, Adam was busy poring over his own notebook. Taking that as a cue, Keith edged closer to Shiro. “What? You’re being weird.”

Shiro rolled his eyes, one of the mannerisms he seemed to have picked up from Keith. About time. “Did you hear about Romelle?”

He frowned, thinking of a girl with blond hair, around Keith’s age. “What about Romelle?

Shiro gave him a long-suffering look, as if Keith not knowing was a tragedy. “Dude, where have you been? She told Lotor that she had a crush on him!”

“A crush?” Keith asked. “You mean, she likes him?”

A nod. “Yeah, heard it happened this morning. Nadia was talking about it during lunch.”

Keith had no idea what to do with the information. He didn’t know how he should react – maybe the fact that he spent his lunch reading _Lord of the Flies_ instead of listening to the chatter of his classmates around him was a sign – so he leaned back and turned to look at Lotor in the back. Some of their other classmates surrounded him, talking excitedly and he had been wondering for whatever reason.

“So, what happens next?” Keith asked, curious. Shiro followed his gaze, and Keith took the time to face his best friend. Shiro had grown impressively, since they were nine and ten. He had gotten taller and bulkier, and his hair was thicker now. His voice was still that same, deep baritone but, occasionally, it broke.

The upper incisors of his teeth were shorter compared to his canines, and it gave Keith the impression of a bunny. Still, there was no denying the evolving maturity of his friend’s features. His lashes were still the same down-turned lines, framing his taupe eyes. The slope of his nose was still the same straight line and the curl of his lips – edges quirked up – was still the same.

“I guess they’re together now.” A voice joined in, and they both turn to Adam. He had closed his notebook, and turned in his seat, an arm over his chair. Keith’s not familiar with what that meant, but he’s not given a chance to ask as Adam turns to Shiro and smiled.

“Thanks for letting me borrow your comic book again, Shiro.” He said, and Keith watched his best friend grin in pleasure. “I really liked _Star Wars._ It’s your favorite, too, right?”

Shiro nodded excitedly, always itching to talk about his well-loved comic book. It wasn’t like Keith ignored him when he was like that, but years spent discussing the same story can grow tiring over time, and Shiro was a friendly person. He was always excited to make new friends and share his interests. It wasn’t like he belonged to Keith and Keith alone.

Still, Adam’s words took root and he turned back to look at Lotor. _Together, huh._

It wasn’t that he was deaf – Keith has heard of his classmates growing into crushes – but he himself never seemed to have developed one. He idly wondered if Shiro has a crush on someone. It wasn’t a topic that came easily in their conversations, and Keith never really brought things like that up all the time. That was why he was so surprised when Shiro started it.

“Hey, I’ll be back, alright?” Keith interrupted them, and Shiro smiled at him while Adam nodded. He stood from his chair and made his way to the back, not really hurrying to Lotor but lingering at the edges, close enough to hear. He made a show of looking for a textbook on the bookshelf at the end of the class room.

“So, you and Romelle are together now?”

“I guess so.” Lotor answered, and Keith heard some of his classmates make an excited sound. Someone bumped into him and Keith moved a bit, pulling a copy of _Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy_ from the shelf and pretended to peruse through it.

“How’d you know you liked her?”

There was a moment of silence, and Keith turned a page. He moved his eyes across a paragraph detailing Johannes Kepler, straining for whatever Lotor might say next.

“I think it’s because I liked her smile, and her jokes always make me laugh. Then, one day, I just realized that I want to spend time with her a lot.”

Some of his classmates squealed, causing Mr. Holt to shush them. They devolved into a scattering giggles, and Keith was facing the book but not really reading it.

Was that it? Was that how you determined how you like someone – their smile, their joke and their laughter? So, would Keith just wake up, one day, and think of someone and their smile, their jokes and their laughter and think – _I want to spend time with this person._

Mr. Holt asked some of the students about the commotion at the back, but Keith was not really hearing it. The page he was on was left unturned, and he was facing the wall but not really seeing it.

“Are you alright, Keith?” He jumped, turning to find Lotor, now free from the throngs, looking at him. Keith closed the book and placed it back on the shelf, patting himself.

“I’m fine.” He answered, then after a moment with Lotor raising a brow at him, followed. “Is it okay if I ask you something about you and Romelle?”

Lotor smiled. “You’re not the first one.”

“Oh, okay.” Keith commented, not knowing how to start. It came to him, then, that Lotor was one of the eldest in the school. Seventeen, if he remembered correctly. That would mean he knew more, right? Didn’t Mr. Griffin tell them that? The older you get, the wiser you become?

But Mr. Griffin wasn’t the reason he was here, and took a step closer to Lotor. “What does it mean when you’re together with her?”

“I’m sorry?” Lotor clarified, smiling politely at him. It just sunk in that this was the first time Keith ever talked to him. He bit his lip.

“What does it mean – you being with her? What happens next now that you and Romelle are together?”

At that, Keith expected him to laugh, maybe look at him consternation – like he was odd. Instead, a pensive look fell across Lotor’s features – not unlike the occasional seriousness Shiro would get. “I’m not really sure, to be completely honest with you. I guess it’s just spending time with each other until we leave for the Colonies.”

“Colonies?”

Lotor squinted at him. “Your guardians haven’t discussed that with you?”

Keith shook his head, unfamiliar with the term. Lotor looked to the side before returning his gaze to Keith. “Well, that doesn’t really matter, but, yes. I believe it’s just spending time with someone you feel happy with. Is there anyone you like?”

The question caught him off-guard, and Keith shook his head. He didn’t really know how he’d be able to answer that – how would he know if he liked someone? If he was in the middle of liking someone?

“How does liking someone feel?”

Lotor uncrossed his arms and thought about it for a bit. Pale hair fell against his dark skin as he nodded to himself. “I guess it feels a bit like falling. You think you’re okay, walking on even ground, thinking it’s just going to be another usual day. Then, you bump into someone, you see their smile and their laughter and it’s like that moment when you miss a step on the staircase? That split-second of fear and uncertainty that has you wondering if you’re gonna tumble to the ground. But then they smile and you find your balance and take the step forward. Suddenly, you don’t feel like you’re gonna take a slip again. I’m not sure if that’s an accurate description, but that’s how it feels to me.”

Keith took the words in, combing his memory for any moment where he felt like he was falling – caught on the spell of a smile, the syllable of a laugh. He came up with nothing, and he doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

What does it mean when he’s never felt that way? He wasn’t really sure if everyone has gone through that, and he wondered if Shiro had felt that for someone – and just failed to tell Keith.

He thanked Lotor and went back to his seat, feeling the other student’s gaze on his back. Shiro looked up at him once he took his seat. “What’d you guys talk about?”

Keith didn’t answer him – not yet. He took a long look at Shiro, and tried to see if he could find an inkling of whether his best friend had these feelings for anyone. Adam voiced a question that had Shiro turning to him, and Keith watched the play of emotions in the taupe eyes he knew so well. Curiosity, surprise and – was that a fluster?

It seemed he failed to hear what Adam had mentioned, because Shiro was stuttering and laughing, the red on his cheeks fading away but the image was imprinted on to his mind. Keith was sure he would never be able to forget that. Memories were ironic – painfully so – now that Keith thought about it. The harder he tried to hold on to them, the faster they slipped from his fingers.

Still, that image of Shiro – flustered cheeks and ochre-tinged eyes – imprinted itself into Keith’s mind so completely, he’s surprised he didn’t see it in his sleep.

* * *

Shiro had asked about it, later, when it was just the two of them. They were on the third floor, in the library, sharing a table by the window. There were a few of their other school mates, scattered around the room in groups – some on the carpet, others on tables and some by the shelves. Keith had a canvas before him, a set of old acrylic paints and spare cloth next to him. He was adding gesso to the canvas when Shiro looked up from his own materials.

They were working on their potluck creations, and Keith already had an idea and a concept in his head. Shiro had tagged along, bringing his own tools, some borrowed from the faculty, others hand-crafted.

It seemed he was planning to make another figurine. Keith rested his brush inside an empty glass container, watching Shiro settle his tools across the table. He was distracted, that he noticed, especially when Shiro barely spoke a word of greeting to him. They were best friends, and they did not need to be around each other all the time but Shiro never failed to greet him every time.

“Paint for your thoughts?” Keith eased in, allowing the gesso to settle on the canvas. The musk of the binder filled his nostrils, and he swallowed as he turned away. Shiro hummed, looking up at him distractedly. “What?”

“You’re busy thinking over there,” Keith prodded, leaning back against the chair. “Want to talk about it?”

Shiro had his face turned to him, hands hovering over his tools but he wasn’t looking at Keith so much as he was looking through him. Keith bristled a bit, unused to the far-off look on Shiro’s face. “Shiro?”

“Is there anyone you like?” Shiro questioned, looking out the window. It was nearing dusk, amber-gold light down the field and creeping in through the glass. The shadows in the library offset the afternoon sunlight, and Keith could see those little white things that seemed to be everywhere.

The question was unexpected, and Keith blinked. “Someone I like?”

“Yeah.” Shiro egged on, finally turning to him and looking _at_ him. “Someone you want to be with?”

It was Keith’s turn to look out the window, uncomfortable with the direction of the question. It wasn’t because he was uncomfortable with Shiro asking, but because he had no answer for him. He thought about what he had heard, and he thought about what Lotor told him – the feeling of freefall, a step unmissed – and he could not come up with anything. No person came to mind.

Keith looked back at Shiro, and wondered. He didn’t feel the free-fall when he thought of Shiro. What he felt was different – certainty, calm, home. That wasn’t what liking someone felt. It was different. Keith didn’t know what made it different.

“I don’t know. Nobody, I guess.” He answered, not exactly a lie, but not exactly the truth either. Shiro stared at him for a bit, and Keith looked down at his paint, unsure as to what to make of the way Shiro looked at him. “Do _you_ wanna be with someone?”

Shiro followed suit, and faced his tools. “Not really.”

Keith didn’t ask again, after that. Some things were just too confusing for him to make certain, and it was difficult enough to ask questions he didn’t even have answers to. Shiro changed the topic after that as they worked on their creations, but Keith had a feeling – an inkling of a feeling – that Shiro wasn’t so sure of his own answer.

* * *

Potluck Day always happened on the first week of September. Seemed fitting, Keith thought, as a remembrance to the end of summer. The day before the potluck, Keith would notice the guardians readying tables in the assembly hall, see them drape cloth over them and set little boxes where the students can display the fruit of their labors. Keith remembered watching from the windows of the boys’ dormitory, watched as the staff that appeared on those days would start cleaning the garden, cutting the grass and hedges, making sure the flowers were blooming, not having withered over the warm days.

Keith remembered feeling anxiety in his chest the day before the potluck, always worried about his own creation. Then, however, he had no name for that. Anxiety was a term he learned, later on, when it got easier to categorize and define feelings that were too chaotic for him to properly narrow down when he was thirteen.

“It’s gonna be okay, you know.” Shiro assured him, an arm around his shoulder. Keith nodded, cherishing the warmth of his best friend’s arm around him. Shiro loved to touch – he was just that kind of person. He always wanted to be constantly touching someone when they were around him, be it a hand on a back, arm around the shoulder or just his shoulder digging into the other.

Keith has never particularly liked or disliked touch. It wasn’t that he was averse to it, but he didn’t really go out of his way to make contact with people on a physical level. Sometimes, there would be days where he didn’t really appreciate being touched – when some of the classmates he’s not particularly close to would link their arms together or bump into him or grab him by the hand. He wasn’t reactive about it, he’d merely unlink himself from them right after.

Shiro, however, was a different thing altogether. Maybe it was because Shiro was his best friend, and that he was the closest and most important person to Keith.

Keith welcomed Shiro’s touch, welcomed it the way he welcomed the cool autumn breeze as respite from the blundering summer days. When the windows were open, the September wind carried with it the promise of gentle rain and coming winter, he would sit by the ledge of the window frame and Shiro would sit across it. Their legs would tangle and they talked about everything – or nothing at all, and that was fine, too.

Those stormy days were always his favorite, when it felt like it was just him and Shiro and the entire world.

“I’m sure you did really well,” Shiro started, shifting on the ledge until he’s sitting across Keith, like always. He settled his leg on top of his, and Keith’s hand automatically rested on it. His best friend gave him a look. “Are you still not showing me what you drew this time?”

Keith gave him a smile and shook his head. “You’ll know, I promise. Not just now.”

Shiro took a long look at him, maybe trying to see something in him that Keith couldn’t hide. It’s funny, because there was nothing Keith wanted to hide from Shiro. He nodded, agreeing to Keith’s words. “Alright. Just know that I’m sure it’ll be amazing. You always are.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, but Keith can’t help the flush of pleasure that thrummed in his veins. He remembered the issue they all had a few months ago, with Lotor and Romelle being together – not that it lasted long. Once the guardians heard of it, they were pushed to separate classes. Romelle stopped talking to Lotor, and Lotor never turned an eye on her again.

Keith had wondered if that was the extent of affection for someone, that if others didn’t like it, it’d die by itself. He recalled the question he and Shiro had asked each other, if there was anyone they would like to be with. Keith still doesn’t have an answer, but now, sitting on the ledge with Shiro’s foot in his lap and the summer storms waiting beyond – he guessed he’s not really pressed for an answer. This was okay, he thought.

Freezing this moment in time, for forever, would be okay.

* * *

“Alright,” Mr. Griffin called, and Keith looked up from setting his canvas on the box. “Mrs. Haggar will be here in ten minutes. Make sure everything is on display, okay?”

A chorus of agreement echoed in the hall, and Keith made eye contact with Shiro, who was next to him. Down the table, Adam was checking if his creation was properly set – a castle with a moat, made entirely of papier-mâché. It was impressive, Keith had to admit, and the colors were painstakingly and carefully set.

“That’s really good, Adam.” Shiro said, voice carrying over, causing many of their classmates to turn and agree. Adam ducked, his cheeks flushing.

“Thanks, Shiro,” he answered, voice quiet, face still red.

Keith was silent, observing their interaction. He wasn’t surprised at Adam’s reaction, not entirely. Shiro always had a talent for being honest, and being generous with his words. It also helped that he had a very charming smile, something that even their guardians have taken note.

The focus of his thoughts turned to him and Keith bit his lip, unsure of the expression on his face. Shiro gave him a tight-lipped smile, always that one smile reserved for Keith, and glanced to the canvas with a cloth draped over it. “You’re taking this secret thing a little too far, don’t ya think?”

“Maybe.” Keith answered, delighting on the pout growing on Shiro’s lips. “It won’t be long.”

“I know.” Shiro agreed, leaning to rest his arms on the table beside the little pedestal of his creation. It was Edo, made entirely of bottle caps. It had been challenging, convincing the cook to part with the caps. Shiro even sequestered his help in the process, but the old woman would not be phased. It wasn’t until they brought it up to Ms. Ina that she agreed, knowing that they weren’t making it up and using the bottle caps for something suspect.

He eyed the neatly painted caps and smiled at Shiro. “You’re getting better. All I had to do this time was just mix the colors.”

Shiro puffed his chest proudly, standing and leaning into Keith’s space. His arm settled around Keith’s waist, bringing their hips together. “Of course, can’t have my talented painter best friend kick my butt on this.”

“No,” Adam piped up teasingly, “you just about begged him on bended knee to help you.”

Shiro flushed and stammered, and Adam laughed graciously. Keith didn’t join in, watching the flush on Shiro’s face at Adam’s teasing, and found himself the center of Adam’s gaze.

The older boy smiled gently at him, and Keith hesitantly returned the smile.

“Alright, Mr. Iverson and Mrs. Haggar are on the way.” Mr. Holt’s voice echoed in the hall, and they all started cleaning the tables up. Keith heard a ‘finally’ from Shiro, who went back to his creation, face free of fluster.

Keith bit his lip, unsure of his thoughts.

His other classmates readied themselves, all in neat lines down the hall. Hunk was across him, and Keith angled himself to take a look – it was a colorful owl made entirely of macramé. Lance, beside him, had painted on a lengthy cloth, and Keith guessed the colors were set in order to make it look stylish, like a banner. Pidge, who was on a table behind him, had made a little book, and a part of him was curious about what it contained.

She glanced up at him and looked away and Keith turned to the door.

It was the director who walked in first, Mr. Iverson dressed in a dark blue suit. He looked noticeably less reticent, and seemed to make an effort not to frown as he nodded at the guardians and greeted them. Keith mindlessly returned the greeting, together with his classmates.

Mrs. H followed after, and everyone – not just Keith – grew a little tense. She wasn’t particularly tall, but her grey hair in a tight bun made her neck look longer, and her taller. She wore a dark purple blouse, like she always did on Potluck Day, and she smiled at them – a small, polite smile that Keith felt didn’t really reach her hazel eyes.

She wasn’t too old, but there were lines of age beneath her eyes though she moved gracefully down the tables.

Mrs. H stopped by the first table, to the first student with her creation on display. She didn’t speak – she never did. She would simply listen to the student describing what they made, give her smile and nod, have the potluck creation carefully placed in a box and placed a bronze token in the little pail next to the pedestal.

She did this over and over, not breaking her smile, but also never reaching her eyes. Mrs. H nodded, raised a brow and shared a glance with Mr. Iverson, and she has done this so many times but Keith has never heard her utter a single sound.

Mrs. H got to their table, and eyed Adam’s castle slowly. She reached a hand out, delicately feeling the castle towers and the bridge, and Keith knew she was completely aware of the intricacy and the detail. She smiled at Adam, and the aide behind her carefully took the castle and set it inside a box.

She walked up to Shiro, and paused. Keith felt his hands sweat, knowing he was next, but forced himself to keep his attention on her instead of ducking his head.

Mrs. H was looking at Shiro, like she always did with the other students, but she took a while with Shiro. She didn’t reach out, or smile widely or any of that sort. Perhaps, it was because Shiro seemed the tallest in the room? Maybe she was surprised at how much he had grown in over a year? Perhaps these were just things Keith thought to put reason to such an action.

Shiro smiled back at her, lips quirked up in ease. “Hello, Mrs. Haggar.”

She nodded, and finally looked away, glancing down at his creation. She wore that same smile and lightly tapped the oak tree.

Shiro grinned. “Uh, yeah, I made Edo house. I guess it’s because it’s home, you know?”

As always, Mrs. H never answered, simply looked to her aide and had the creation packed up. A bronze coin was placed in Shiro’s pail, and Keith felt his best friend ease from tension as Mrs. H set her sight on him.

Keith swallowed, deep, and glanced at the canvas with the drapes. She looked at him, searching. He nodded and slowly reached for the drape, unsure of what to say. He didn’t turn to look at Shiro, but he could feel the other’s gaze hot on him.

He pulled the drape away, and Mrs. H turned to his painting. Keith belatedly realized the eyes of every one of his classmates on him when he pulled the sheet off. Shiro leaned forward to take a look at his painting.

Throat dry, Keith managed to bumble out a jumble explanation. “Um, it’s—“

Mrs. H wasn’t looking at him, staring intently at his painting. Shiro’s eyes were wide, and he looked at Keith, something undecipherable in his gaze. Keith swallowed. “It’s—um—it’s my best friend, Shiro.”

The painting on the canvas was Shiro, dressed in beige robes and wielding a blue lightsaber, set against a dark blue background littered with stars. Shiro Skywalker, he had called it, in his head. Not many would understand what he was trying to say, but there was no escaping the dark hair and the taupe eyes of the painting’s subject. Even a blind man could guess it was Shiro, Keith knew.

Mrs. H looked up from the painting, but she didn’t look at him and hurried for her aide to set the painting in a box. She dropped a token in his pail, the coin cluttering loudly in the thick silence of the hall. She stepped to the next one, and Keith continued to burn a hole on the table with his gaze.

Beside him, Shiro was still and silent.

* * *

Keith stood outside the Director’s Office, watching his other classmates exchange their tokens for trinkets. He saw Pidge leave the office with a new book, and Keith was not surprised. Nadia excitedly chattered to another classmate, a doll in her hand, as they walked down the hall. Many of his classmates left the office with smiles on their faces, clutching new toys and things against their chest, voices merry as they passed by Keith.

When Mrs. H had left, finally done with the Annual Potluck, it was chaos – the students hurrying to the Director’s Office to have their tokens exchanged. The guardians barked over them, instructing them to be orderly. Keith felt his other classmates behind him amble forward, and he had to hurry unless he wanted to get trampled on.

He lost sight of Shiro in the hall, and it seemed like his best friend disappeared.

Keith didn’t know what to feel, what to make of the weird churning in his stomach that felt like someone had pulled the rug from under him. He never felt this way before, and it clawed at him to put his arms around his center, tight, as if doing so would hold him together.

The token felt warm in his grasp, and he looked around again, not finding a trace of Shiro.

It would take years for Keith to be familiar with this feeling, like he was falling, with no end in sight.

Now, though, he only had a new fascination with this feeling, and Keith tried to ignore it as he stepped forward and entered the office, the crowd visibly thinned out. Mr. Iverson wasn’t in the office, but Mr. K was, and he nodded at Keith.

“I thought you’d be waiting out there forever,” Mr. K noted, and Keith shook his head.

“I was waiting for someone, sir.”

Mr. K gestured to the table where the trinkets for exchange were, a pail set next to the assortment of items, and Keith saw a number of tokens in it. “Well, make sure you take a look before someone else got what you like.”

He nodded and looked through the items. There were a few books, some as thick as Pidge’s _Lord of Flies,_ and there were some comic books in it, too. Keith guessed Shiro would go after that, like always.

A few toys – a small bouncing ball, jump-rope, a few action figures – set next to crayons in boxes, five-color watercolors, a few brushes. Keith took a long look at them, eyeing their tips, before looking over the other side, where there was a circular machine that looked a bit like a radio, with big headphones attached to it. Beside it was a stack of CDs, and Keith pulled one out.

It was an album, _This Empty Northern Hemisphere,_ by Gregory Alan Isakov. The casing was made entirely of plastic, but Keith didn’t mind that as he looked at the design of the cover. It was like a watercolor painting – depicting a purple night sky shifting to rose-gold, littered in stars and a streaking comet, and a gold moon rested low on the horizon. Shadowed outlines of trees rose to meet them, and in the center, was a man dressed in a suit, pastel-colored flowers resting inside his front pocket. He seemed to hold something up to his ear, like a telephone.

He didn’t have a thing to use so he could listen to it, but he liked the cover enough. He eyed the circular radio-thing. Maybe next year, he can get that.

A hand reached out and grabbed it, and Keith looked up to Shiro eyeing him, a gentle smile on his face.

“Aren’t you getting the CD?” He asked, and Keith swallowed, the weight in his stomach disappearing the moment he registered that smile on his best friend’s face. Keith could not voice a response, merely nodded.

“Good, we can listen to it together.” Shiro said, and the words sounded like a promise, and he reached forward to drop his token into the pail. Keith’s own fell against it, and they walked out of the office together, Mr. K watching after them.

Keith’s shoulder pressed into Shiro’s side, and his best friend’s arm was draped across his upper back, and Keith felt all was right with the world.

They stepped outside the office, and walked amiably into the field, silent but easy. Keith was busy looking over the album, eyeing the track list and Shiro was fingering the edge of the radio – a _Walkman_ , Ms. Ina had said, when she came across them and saw the item in Shiro’s hands. _Take good care of that, young man._

“Oh,” Shiro muttered, voice flat. Keith paused, looking up at him. “What?”

Shiro was looking at the back of the Walkman, where two empty battery slots stared back at them. Keith couldn’t help it, as he broke out chuckling. Shiro looked infinitely sad for a second before joining Keith in laughter.

“Maybe next time?” Keith said, voice upbeat. Shiro grinned back, still chuckling.

Someone called out to them, and Shiro looked up in time to catch something in his free hand. Keith stared at the item in his best friend’s hand, and saw two batteries.

Adam smiled at them, holding up a battery-less flashlight.

* * *

They took turns using it, sitting under the oak tree where the old tyre swung lightly in the autumn wind. Keith had his back against the trunk, Shiro to his by the root and Adam across him. The Walkman with the headphones rested in the center, on the grass, next to Keith’s album.

They let Adam have first use, agreeing to switch every time a song ended, and Keith closed his eyes, feeling the wind softly rush against his skin. Shiro had his legs crossed under him, one hand on Keith’s knee and another on the edge of Adam’s shoulder, staring into the distance.

Keith’s never really thought about the relationship between the three of them. He knew Shiro, knew him with the same intimacy as he knew the lines on his palm. Adam, of course, was also someone he knew — but he wasn’t Keith’s best friend. No, he was a classmate, a familiar face, one so ingrained in his life and every waking moment that he may as well have faded into the background, a fixture like the dark mahogany balustrade, or the silver-steel window frames, or one amongst the million grass blades ever reaching towards the sky.

Still, what he felt for Adam was not what Shiro may feel for him. He may be a valued friend to Shiro, and Keith knew that he will always be the best friend. He knew that there was no need for the fixation, and the staring and the questions popping in his head when Shiro glanced at the other and smiled, an emotion Keith did not recognize playing in his eyes.

Adam smiled back, taking the headphones off and passing it to Shiro. Keith turned to look beyond the old tyre, and the grass fields and the stone parapets in the distance. What could lay there, he wondered. What waited beyond those lines?

A dozen thoughts ran through his head, conjuring images of what stood further than the parapets. Monsters, oceans and a hundred islands made of bottle caps, trees made of papier-mâché and macrame princesses wearing dresses painted in bold, colorful strokes. Some, he was sure, was utter nonsense.

Still, he knew nothing of what lay beyond, and for the longest time, he never thought to ask. Would he be able to reach that horizon? Would he be able to cross the endless grass plains and find what lies at the edge of his world?

Would he walk alone, or would Shiro be there, shoulder to shoulder? Would Adam be there?

Perhaps, beyond, the answers to all his questions waited, littered amongst the blades like trash across the green. Perhaps, there, he would find the fixtures of all those that he felt lost and wondering, just waiting to be found.

“Here,” Shiro’s voice broke through his thoughts, and he turned to see his best friend hold up the headphones to him. His thumb drew circles against Keith’s knee, and the track number flashed on the little screen. “Your turn.”

Gently, he took the headphones and placed them over his ears, the rustling of the leaves and trees dulled, and the distant chatter gone silent.

Shiro pressed the play button, smiling at him and Keith heard nothing but silence — then the slow, calm strumming of guitar strings. Idly, fondly, the musician drew notes in to the air, and a soft voice crooned, and Keith felt his eyes closing, the words of a song of a house, a home, shifted in his ears.

He continued to hold the headphones to his ears, eyes closed as the lyrics unfurled over like quiet whispering. It was calming, slithering in through the autumn wind and over his skin. Of course, he had no idea what the song was about — not entirely, yet.

But the wind whistled in the spaces the headphones could not cover, and Shiro’s hand was warm on his knees and the line of the horizon beyond the parapets stayed the same. Edo House stood across the field, warm and welcoming in the afternoon light, a fixture in Keith’s whole life.

 _The shingles, man, they’re shakin’_   
_The back door’s burnin’ through._   
_This old house, she’s quite the keeper._ _  
_Quite the keeper of you.

Somehow, he thought of Edo House and her sturdy walls. He thought of the balustrade where he once slipped, and the assembly hall where he and Shiro had a thumb war. He thought of the foyer and how it felt when his knees rubbed painfully against the wood. He thought of the dark-brown carpet down the main halls, and the chipped-off paint on the fourth window-sill in the library. He thought of the carved in letters on his headboard, where Shiro had tried to engrave their names together, so that those who would follow them would know they were here, in Edo House with her sturdy walls, sensibly shut doors, and where an old tyre swung.

He thought of Mr. Griffin and his less acerbic smile, and he thought of Ms. Ina and her red-tipped pen scratching on paper, words curled to the sonnets of Shakespeare. He thought of Mr. Holt and his chestnut hair tied to a ponytail, kind eyes hidden behind his frames. He thought of Mr. K and the warmth of his voice.

Funny, Keith thought, that he failed to realize they lived in this house just as much as they did. Maybe they were all Edo students, sifting through the endless green fields, where storms lingered in the distance.

* * *

Sometimes, Keith would drive down lanes. He would hold the steering wheel tight, and he’d roll the windows down, and the road before him would lie — empty and tranquil. It was not often, the empty streets where the red cedar trees grew to astonishing heights, framing the asphalt lines in their green-red colors. Trees, of other genuses, would grow just as tall as the cedar trees. Keith only knew that one kind, though, because they reminded him of the trees that he saw the first time he left Edo House.

But the trees were not of great importance, and neither was the memory of leaving Edo House. That was for later time.

What Keith thought he saw in the trees, that was what mattered to him, now.

Sometimes, Keith would drive down lanes, and the driver’s window would be down and he would feel the mid-October wind rushing in, and he’d squint his eyes as a song played quietly from the radio. Not often, sometimes too rarely, but it would happen.

He would turn his head, just when the sunlight managed to cut through the numerous leaves of varying color, and what was pale gold would break into scarlets and yellows and green and he’d swear, cross his heart and on his name—

There, just in the minute spaces where the light sometimes could not reach, he could see beige walls where doors were sensibly shut, red roof slates where ceilings were sturdy and a big old oak tree where a tyre continued to swing. Maybe if he stared longer, and maybe if no cars appeared from ahead to cause him to pull his gaze away—

Maybe if he kept looking, he could find a way through the forest and take that one step where endless grass fields waited, where stone parapets stood and where summer storms lingered in the distance.

A keeper of a house, and within, there a figure would stand — an always-gentle smile on his lips, a Walkman in one hand and an old album in the other. Waiting.

* * *

And if the story ended there, Keith would have loved that. It would have been the happiest ending to any story, to come home and find that one person who completely defined it, waiting. Keith would have smiled back, waved a little and crossed the fields in a run.

But if the story ended there, then it would not be Keith’s story. If he took a step, and another, towards infinite grass fields where summer storms played, and find Edo House and Shiro waiting, that would have never been his story, and he would have told a lie.

Because the story didn’t end there, and Keith never set foot again in the endless fields outside Edo House, and he saw no stone parapets through the spaces between the trees where the light sometimes could not reach, and the summer storms were only tempest winds lingering in, conjured from time. Shiro, who stood there, was just a shadow of an outline, flickering in and out, a wraith stuck in the folds between memories.

Keith’s story, after all, did not have a happy ending.

* * *

Fifteen was often a turning point in one’s life. Keith remembered being fifteen, remembered the pimples lining his jaw, and remembered the crack of his voice every time he so much as said a word. He remembered the way his female classmates grew, the fullness of their breasts, the angling of their jaws. He remembered the line of hair growing along Shiro’s jaw, the bulkiness of his shoulders.

Keith had grown taller, then. He wasn’t as big as Shiro, but he grew tall, enough to look over most of this other classmates, almost as tall as Shiro.

Fifteen brought with it a lot of changes, and not just the physical. The lessons grew more difficult, the expectations heavier.

Somehow, sitting on ledges to face summer storms grew rarer and rarer. The nights spent under thick blankets, shared together in a bed made for one no longer happened. The more years passed by, the more questions arrived, itching for answers he could not deliver.

It was no longer Keith and Shiro.

Somehow, in the years between, they became Keith, Shiro and Adam. The two best friends became three, though Keith thought that calling him and Adam ‘best friends’ was taking a bit too far. He was not a stranger anymore, and he never was to begin with. Adam became someone Keith could consider a friend, perhaps not as close a friend as Shiro was, but enough to take notice.

Interests changed, when fifteen hits. Keith realized that, mostly in retrospect.

The jump-rope and dolls were left abandoned, exchanged for mirrors and CDs. The Walkman Shiro had gotten from the potluck when they were both thirteen had somehow became the property of everyone, shifting hands so many times it was almost impossible to keep track of.

Still, there were moments — too rare moments — that Shiro and Keith would share it between them, playing the first album Keith had gotten. The CDs change, and the songs fade in and out from time to time, but when that one track played, Keith would settle against the oak tree and stare out to the endless fields.

Maybe it happened gradually, or maybe it happened too quickly and Keith simply failed to take note — Keith listening to the album against the tree, and more often than not, all by himself.

He wasn’t entirely alone — when almost fifty students lived in one house, it was almost impossible to be alone — but the roots of the oak tree grew lonely, and Keith’s sides felt empty as the coming winter winds thumbed through the leaves.

Keith pulled his beanie further down his head, covering his ears from the cold wind. His lips felt chapped, and he looked up at the amber glow of the hall lights from the upper floors of Edo House.

One of the library windows were open, and Keith squinted his eyes. He recognized the person sitting on the ledge, could tell him from the way his back arched as he gestured while talking.

Shiro had his back against the wall, and across him, glasses distinct even from a distance, was Adam.

Keith pressed pause on the Walkman, taking the headphones off. He rolled the wires together and settled them on his lap, just in case he might forget them. Shiro would never forgive him if he left the Walkman out in the field, where the rain came randomly.

A few paces away, a couple of his female classmates were giggling to themselves, bent over a book. He spied Nadia’s hair constantly in a braid, thrust over her shaking shoulder as they all laughed again, conspiratorial. One of them looked up and around, making eye contact with him.

It was Hira, who whispered something to Nadia and Laika. All three of them turned to him, eyeing him, cheeks red. They talked amongst themselves, Keith frowning suspiciously at them. They saw his frown and giggled loud, their laughter echoing in the fields.

Keith felt someone’s gaze on him, and he looked up. Shiro was waving at him, Adam turning his head to follow.

He didn’t wave back, merely stood from his seat and thought of going up to the library. He ignored the giggling babble to his side, and ducked his head into his jacket as the wind picked up. The sudden chill turned the girls’ giggling into little squeaks of surprise, and Keith stood as they all ran to the foyer, a book in Nadia’s hand.

Shaking his head, Keith continued slowly, until a sound echoed in his ears. It must have been brought on by the wind, he had not noticed earlier. It was a small cry, muffled, coming from the flower beds.

Tucking the Walkman into his jacket, Keith held a hand to his beanie — somehow fearing the wind would rip it off him — and walked closer to the flower bed. The sound came again, like crying but in very minute sounds, almost impossible to hear if he hadn’t stopped to listen.

He stepped closer, his boots coming up to the wilting sunflowers, and it took him a while to spot what was making the sound, camouflaged in the brightness of yellow. In between a few beds ahead of him, there was a small creature hidden under the stems of the sunflowers.

Some of the flowers were bent, perhaps when the creature passed, but it wasn’t moving away. It seemed like a rodent, laying on its side as it twitched. Its fur was a dark brown, and it was splotched in dark patches in some places. Beady eyes blinked rapidly as its body continued to twitch and tremble amidst the leaves.

“Hey,” Keith said, but in the loudness of the wind, he may as well have whispered. “Are you okay?”

The rodent twitched, and continued to lay on its side. He could see it breathing fast, see its body rise up and down rapidly, like it was running. Small teeth and a pink tongue were visible, its mouth open, as it curled and twitched again.

Keith cocked his head, frowning. “What are you doing?”

The rodent moved, turning its head to him — maybe it heard his voice? Keith didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what was happening, they never really studied animals that closely before to tell.

Overhead, the sky rumbled, heralding a storm. The distant horizon was grey, almost black, with rain clouds.

He heard someone call his name, and he turned away from the twitching rodent. Mr. Holt was standing by the foyer, waving a hand at him. Keith itched to go, but he turned back to the rodent and stepped closer. “It’s about to rain, you know. You shouldn’t be out in the rain. You gotta find shelter.”

The rodent twitched again, squeaking. Mr. Holt called out to him, voice growing louder. The sky thundered, and the wind that breezed past felt wet.

Keith shook his head. “You shouldn’t have been out here. C’mon, you can stay inside, alright?”

He made sure the Walkman was secure in his jacket before he stepped closer, avoiding the stems of the other sunflowers. The rodent watched him, beady eyes rapidly moving about. Slowly, he bent and placed a hand on the rodent’s side.

It wasn’t warm, like he expected it to be. It was cold, actually, and it felt weird. Biting his lip, he placed his other hand over and held it tight — not tight enough to hurt, but enough to make sure it wouldn’t fall. The rodent twitched again, limply, and Keith barely felt it. “Alright, I got ya.”

“Keith,” Mr. Holt’s voice was a few paces away, and he half-turned to see him crossing the distance. He was frowning, and Keith was already expecting a lecture. “I’ve been shouting your name four times now. It’s about to rain, get in.”

“Yes, sir, I just—” Keith blurted out, holding the rodent close just in case it moved and slipped. It twitched again, and he could feel its heart beating loudly and rapidly against his hand. If he leaned close enough, he could probably hear it panting. “Just have to get this in.”

“What are you talking about, boy?” Mr. Holt groused, irritated. Keith turned to him, seeing the guardian tower over him.

Mr. Holt’s brown eyes fell from his to the rodent in his hands. Keith opened his mouth to explain when he stopped, looking down. The rodent had stopped twitching, and he could no longer feel its heart beating against his hand.

It was still — so still, and cold. Its eyes were open, but they weren’t moving, and its pink tongue lolled out against his thumb. He pressed his finger into its belly, expecting it to twitch again. It didn’t, continued to stare back at Keith until something wet and clear drizzled into his palm.

Suddenly, Mr. Holt’s hand slapped his wrist and the surprise has Keith letting go of the rodent, watched it fall to the ground. It was still as a rock, even in impact, but he didn’t get to think much about it as Mr. Holt grabbed him by the hand and dragged him to the foyer.

“Mr. H-Holt—” Keith complained, the vicegrip his guardian had on his wrist hurt, but Mr. Holt wasn’t looking at him. His guardian’s shoulders were rigid, stiff and he didn’t let up as he continued to drag Keith along like he was a suitcase. Keith had to run to catch up to him, but the grip on his wrist wouldn’t ease up.

They made it up to the foyer, and Keith almost tripped on the steps. “Mr. Holt, it hurts—”

Mr. Holt didn’t answer him, and he heard someone call his guardian’s name, and he turned to find Mr. K watching them with concerned eyes, the other students behind him following Keith being dragged to the kitchen. He heard someone bounding down the staircase, and Ms. Ina’s voice reprimanding them.

Keith turned his head up, grunting in pain as he started to lose feeling in his wrist, seeing Shiro rushing down the steps, eyes worried.

Mr. Holt pulled the door open, and it slammed into the wall loudly, causing Keith to jump, staring — bewildered and a little scared — at his guardian’s back. They were at the lavatory, his own scared expression distinct in the mirror.

Mr. Holt’s face was pale, and his eyes were wide, his lips bit too tightly. He opened the faucet, and pulled Keith’s hand under the rushing of the water. “Mr. Holt, please—”

“Give me your other hand.” Mr. Holt growled, and Keith had never heard his guardian sound like that before. “Give me your other hand _now.”_

The last word was loud and Keith jumped, pushing his free hand under the water. His entire body was still, terrified and confused as Mr. Holt kept them under the cold. There was the sound of footsteps behind them, and he turned to see Shiro and Adam, and the rest of their classmates looking in from the entry way.

“Keith,” Shiro started, frowning and Keith shook his head. He had no idea what was happening with Mr. Holt.

His guardian started washing his hands with soap, and he felt Mr. Holt’s ring on his fourth finger rub against Keith’s palm, but he didn’t say anything, too afraid of how the guardian would react.

“Matt?” A female voice called, and Keith saw Ms. Ina walk into the kitchen. “Matt, what happened?”

“Explain later.” He heard Mr. Holt say, his voice low and worried. Ms. Ina looked from his guardian to Keith, and frowned. Keith shook his head again.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, with Mr. Holt washing his hands, but it could not have lasted longer than hour, or even ten minutes, until his guardian’s ministrations were softer, and he finally closed the valve. Shiro and Adam were still there, but they were quiet, and they shared a look before Shiro turned to Keith.

Slowly, Mr. Holt straightened up, and Keith saw color return to his face as he inspected Keith’s hands, his fingers soft on the red skin. Sweat dotted Mr. Holt’s forehead, and his hair was plastered against his skin. His glasses were wet.

Keith allowed himself to relax when Mr. Holt grabbed a towel and carefully dried his hands, and when he let them go, Keith pressed them against his chest, still unsure as to what happened. He didn’t look away from Mr. Holt wiping the sink and throwing the towel into the trash bin beside it.

He looked up and made eye contact with Keith in the mirror, and his dark brown eyes did not blink.

“You’re okay,” he said, and his voice was low and quiet, unlike his earlier irritation and worry. “You’re okay.”

Keith nodded, hesitant and unsure of what Mr. Holt meant. His mind kept going back to the rodent on the ground, that stopped moving. Overhead, there was a rumble that made some of the students cry out in surprise, and then the heavy pour of rain pelted against Edo House’s roof.

The rain must have kicked Mr. Holt out of whatever it was he was in, as he wiped his forehead on his forearm and turned to them. “Go on, all of you. Get ready for supper, and I don’t want to see anyone near the gardens, again. Am I clear?”

Keith was the first to nod, and he didn’t have to turn to know everyone else was following. Mr. Holt turned from them to him, and nodded, gesturing for him to go.

Keith opened his mouth to ask, but thought better of it as Ms. Ina caught his eye and she shook her head. Keith nodded back, and turned to face his two friends. Adam was frowning at him, worried, and Shiro was biting his lip. He could still feel Mr. Holt’s gaze burn into his back, and so hurried past his best friend and his other friend.

He heard Shiro call out to him, but he ignored the other as he ran up the staircase, still holding his hands to his chest. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him, including Mr. K’s from the antechamber and he didn’t stop running until he reached the boys’ dormitory.

Shiro appeared in the doorway seconds after, but Keith refused to look up at him as he curled in his bed, facing the wall. “Keith?”

Another pair of footsteps arrived, calmer, but Keith didn’t care. He also didn’t care that Lance and Hunk were staring at him from their corner of the room, still unaware of what transpired below. Given enough time, the entire house would know by supper.

A hand touched his shoulder, and Keith stilled a bit, before recognizing the touch and turning. Shiro was leaning over him, brows furrowed, and his eyes were worried. “Keith?”

He asked again, and Keith blinked, only noticing the wetness down his cheeks. He released his hands from their own self-induced grip and wiped at the tears. “What?”

“Keith,” Shiro repeated, sitting on the bed. Keith felt the mattress dip, and he sat up, wiping the tears away with his jacket, rubbing them hard and raw until his cheeks were red. He had even forgotten to take his boots off, clumps of dirt now on the covers. He didn’t care about them, not at the moment. “Hey, c’mon, buddy.”

Shiro leaned close and took his hands away from further bruising his face, and Keith turned to face him. A part of him wondered what Shiro saw in him at that moment. When Shiro had sat there, looking at him after the tears have gone, when Adam sat on Shiro’s bed at the side and also looked at him in concern, what did they see in him, then?

Keith would later find the answer all on his own, but for that moment, what he could think about was the rodent in his hand that grew cold.

“It just went still.” He answered, looking at Shiro, even though a question was not asked. Shiro continued to frown at him, a hand gripping his, resting over his best friend’s knee. Keith felt the confusion and fear in him, the unanswered wonderings to the creature that had gotten so still in a matter of a second. “It was in my hands and I could feel it twitching, and it just went still.”

His voice grew hoarse, losing spark but he waved his hands, gesturing to what had rested there for but a moment. Shiro turned to look at Adam, before returning his gaze to Keith. The worry was still there, but none of the understanding he sought.

Keith shook his head, unsure of what he wanted to do or say. Nobody was there when it happened — nobody but him and Mr. Holt, who refused to speak about it. Keith gestured with his hands again. “I-I-I felt it moving, and it was moving. I could see its eyes blinking, l-like the way a person would blink but it was blinking so fast, I thought it was going to burst. A-And I could feel its heart beating against my hand, but it was beating way too fast, like it was panting and I was bringing it inside because it was going to rain, and it wasn’t going to m-make it out there under the flowers, so I had to bring it in and then it stopped blinking, and I couldn’t feel its heart beating and it went so still. It felt like a rock, and it felt so cold like it was made of ice and I—”

He stopped in his stammering, watching the worry grow in Shiro’s eyes. His best friend didn’t say anything, just started at him — and a part of Keith took that as worrisome. The understanding, that one line he was relying on — that pinpoint understanding and sympathy that Shiro could conjure in a moment — was not there.

Keith opened his mouth, and his lips formed soundless words. “That’s—that’s not right. Right? That’s not right?”

“Keith,” Shiro repeated, after a long bout of silence. Even Lance and Hunk at the side didn’t so much as breathe loudly. “What happened?”

He didn’t know how to answer that question, and slowly, Keith pulled his hand out from Shiro’s grasp, even when his best friend tried to tighten his hold. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Those three words sounded like the best response, at the moment, yet they also sounded completely worthless. Shiro’s lips curled downwards, and he said no more. Keith looked up at him, from beneath his fringe, and had no idea what to make of the expression on his best friend’s face.

“Y-You,” Keith started, voice wobbly. “You believe me, right?”

“Keith,” Shiro repeated, and for the first time in his life, Keith found the sound of his name on Shiro’s tongue grating. “I don’t know—I don’t know, Keith. I don’t know.”

He stared at Shiro, stared at him hard and long, his bare hands open and gesturing. He couldn’t say anything, unsure of the coldness that ran through him as he continued to gesture pathetically between them. What had he been hoping? What had he been wishing to see?

That same line of understanding? That wordless, signless agreement? Was he expecting a return of that moment back when they were nine and ten, when all he needed to do was look at Shiro and his best friend would know, in an instant, without question, what he was thinking?

Was that what he expected to find in those taupe eyes?

The answer was clear as day, as cold as the creature in his hands.

Keith looked away, unable to face Shiro and not feel...oddly betrayed and hurt. He laid down, turning his back on his best friend — for the first time ever — and pressed his face against the pillow. “I’d like to be alone right now.”

There was a beat of silence, before a hand fell on his shoulder and Keith felt the urge to shake it off so badly, but he restrained himself. He didn’t know why — but he didn’t want Shiro around. Not now.

He can never want his best friend gone, but it _hurt_ to even look at him, and Keith didn’t know why. He didn’t know why, and it scared him so bad that his eyes stung. “Please, leave me alone.”

“Keith,” Shiro repeated, one more time and his voice tipped between worry and hurt. Keith bit his lip and breathed deep. He heard someone stand, and Adam’s calm voice echoed in the quiet hall.

“Let’s give him some time, Shiro.” Adam spoke, voice soft and he can almost imagine Shiro turning to the older boy in confusion, and worry. The image _hurt_ and Keith’s not sure if it’s because Shiro didn’t understand, or that Shiro found someone else to share that with. He bit his lip again. “He’s had a scare. We’ll bring him supper, later.”

A part of him wanted to bristle at the word, at Adam’s concern because it felt unfounded, and it felt forced and it felt condescending and he wanted something to be angry at, but a bigger part was relieved because Adam obviously understood his need to be alone — at least, for now. It confused him all the more, and he settled on closing his eyes and wishing himself to sleep.

There was a deeply-taken breath, and it sounded sad, and Keith knew it was Shiro. His best friend was quiet as he stood, the weight disappearing off the mattress and he could immediately tell apart Adam’s even pace from Shiro’s hesitant shuffle.

“C’mon, Shiro.” Adam prodded. “Get some sleep, Keith.”

“Keith.” Shiro’s voice came again, pleading and soft. Keith couldn’t stop the tremble of his shoulder, and he answered. “Later. Later.”

There was silence, before Shiro responded, sounding a lot more relieved. “Okay.”

Keith swallowed, whispering back. “Okay.”

* * *

Later, when supper came, Keith dried his tears and went down. He ignored the stares on his person as he ambled up to his usual spot, on the table by the left side of the hall, where there was a spot next to Shiro that was set for him. He did not make eye contact with any of his classmates, pretending that the heads turning his way were not present.

On instinct, he looked up at the faculty table, and accidentally stared into Mr. Holt’s eyes. He looked back at Keith, eyes heavy with something Keith doesn’t recognize, before he turned away. Keith ducked his head and continued on his way, feeling oddly bereft.

Shiro turned to him the moment he sat down, and Keith saw the questions in his eyes, and the way his grip on his fork tightened. There was a wonderful platter of vegetables and fruit laid across the table, and strips of lean meat on plates were set in between. It looked really good. Keith didn’t feel like eating at all.

He made a show of it, though, and pushed at the lettuce and the tomatoes, ignoring the weight of Shiro’s concerned gaze on his skin. He turned to him, mapped the fall of dark hair against his forehead, and the lashes that framed kind taupe eyes and Keith smiled at him, pretending that he was fine — that none of what happened this afternoon ever happened at all.

Shiro’s eyes studied him, for a long moment, before smiling back, albeit slowly.

Though Keith promised to talk about it later, no discussion happened. Keith was content to let it slide and left ignored, and he did not rise up to the bait when Shiro continued to turn and look at him, his mouth opening but no words coming out until that, too, stopped.

It would only occur, much later, the realization and the order to it all. What Keith did, Shiro followed. He wrote lines on the chalk board, and Shiro followed. Keith sat up at night, unable to sleep and Shiro did the same.

Keith didn’t want to talk about it, and Shiro — of course — would pretend that he, too, didn’t want to talk about it.

* * *

And when Keith took a step and disappeared, it only seemed fitting that Shiro would, too.

* * *

It wasn’t often that Keith could recall what happened when he was still in Edo House. Not a lot of people can attest to remembering everything when they were young, and Keith could do no more than wait for those memories to come back. Still, that didn’t mean he forgot everything that happened when he was fifteen.

Fifteen, like he believed, was a turning point for so many things. It was also his first brush with death, though he would not know it so intimately until years later — or, now that he thought about it, many months in that same year.

Still, there was a difference between knowing and understanding, and though it was easy to define a word, it was a lot more challenging to put it in context.

What happened with the rodent continued to be a subject that Keith carefully avoided, not just with casual conversation with his classmates, but even with Shiro and Adam. It took days for him to ignore it until it was barely a blimp in his consciousness, and he was glad to leave it there. Out of sight, out of mind, and it was later that he grasped the confusion on Shiro and Adam’s faces were born not out of a desire for cruelty, but of total ignorance.

How would one define color to someone blind from birth? A song to someone who could not hear ever since they first took breath?

It was impossible to describe and define the concept of death to someone else when Keith himself was completely in the dark about it — and the only for him to bridge that gap between his best friend and friend was to understand it himself.

There was only one person who could answer that for him.

* * *

The thing was — it seemed that Mr. Holt also managed to reach the same conclusion or, Keith thought, considering his age and expertise, he may have reached that conclusion that same rainy afternoon instead of the weeks-long time it took for Keith to even start thinking about it.

It wasn’t hard to find Mr. Holt. After all, the guardians also lived at Edo House, and taught all the students. He could pretty much come across Mr. Holt in the kitchen ransacking the refrigerator as easy as it was to come across Ms. Ina walking about the second floor landing, reading out lines from _Macbeth_ while gesturing with her free hand.

Still, finding Mr. Holt was not the same was getting him to talk, for it seemed that, unless Keith was in class and he asked a question, he became completely invisible to Mr. Holt. The guardian would turn a corner and see Keith down the hall, and his eyes would run right through Keith as if he weren’t there.

It wasn’t even because Keith rarely spoke to him, but even when Keith actively called out to him, Mr. Holt would just walk past by, like Keith was a fixture in the house.

It was utterly hopeless, and Keith soon stopped chasing after someone who pretended he didn’t exist. It made him feel uncharacteristically empty.

That wasn’t the last of it, Keith remembered. Funny how things sometimes worked out, though not necessarily for the better, when he has stopped fighting for them.

* * *

It was in spring, again, when the rest of the students were out in the fields, enjoying the warm breeze and the long-missed sunlight. Keith was in the dormitory, readying to head down himself, but he planned to bring his easel down with him — wanted to get ahead of sketching for that year’s potluck.

He had Shiro’s headphones on, the Walkman safe inside the sling bag he got exchanged from last year. It was one of those days where he had that first album in, listening to Gregory Alan Isakov softly crooning along whimsical lyrics Keith knew by heart. He had been set to go down, but stopped halfway through the door.

There was another album, thrown haphazardly on Lance’s bed. It was by a female singer, Judy Bridgewater, entitled _Never Let Me Go._ The artwork of the album was simple, depicting a silhouette of a woman in a blue dress, holding a baby in her arms. The faded motion of it reminded Keith of a woman shushing her baby to sleep in her arms.

When the next track came on, and a different song played in his ears, he didn’t know why he felt like it, but he imagined Judy Bridgewater softly singing to a sleeping baby, arranging him in her arms. _Baby, never let me go._

Keith raised his hands, formed them against his chest as if he, too, was holding his own baby and he swayed, slowly. Side-to-side. He sang a different song, though. He sang along to Gregory Alan Isakov, not Judy Bridgewater, and he sang about a house instead of a baby.

 _And I will go if you ask me to,_   
_I will stay if you dare._   
_And if I go, I’m goin’ on crazy,_ _  
_let my darlin’ take me there.

He followed Gregory’s voice, singing softly, pretending the baby in his arms was asleep. He could imagine it — could imagine _his_ soft skin, its cheeks flush and its eyes closed in sleep. A tuft of dark hair would peek out of the cloth around him, and his little hand would close into a fist and open, as he breathed deep, safe and warm in Keith’s arms. He continued to sing, and turn, and in the quiet of the dormitory, he could almost make himself believe that there really was a baby in his arms, hearing the slight hiccups and the breathing.

Keith didn’t really know why he chose that song to sing. If someone had asked him why, he would not have been able to give a logical response. In spite of that, he continued to sing, voice growing louder and louder. Perhaps it was because the song reminded him so much of Edo House, and Shiro and his whole life. Perhaps it was because it simply sounded nice. Regardless, his voice grew louder until it was louder than how he’d usually sound — a first time for everything.

He turned in place, and stilled. Mr. Holt was in the doorway, looking in and Keith stopped singing, his arms still held up in position.

Mr. Holt had a hand to his mouth, and there were tears down his cheeks.

He couldn’t even speak, Keith had no idea _what_ to say when Mr. Holt suddenly turned and went down the staircase, footsteps echoing. Many years later, that one image would haunt Keith, and he can still recall that with frightening clarity.

He can still imagine the warm tracks down Mr. Holt’s cheeks, the redness of his eyes, the white of his knuckles and the stifled sobs he was trying to supress. At the time, Keith barely understood what happened, bewildered by the action and almost chalked it off as a passing delusion.

It wasn’t until the next few days that things shifted, again. For better or for worse, Keith wasn’t sure. Sometimes, when a pendulum swung, it could catch itself on something, unable to swing again. Sometimes, what’s better could be worse, and what was worse could be better.

* * *

That spark of realization didn’t occur when Keith was where is now. No, the understanding came, later on, when he was eighteen. When he came of age. What happened when he was fifteen was both the tip of the iceberg, and the entire thing altogether. After all, when you’re looking down from high up, everything seemed infinitely smaller and less important. It was only in hindsight that you realize things for what they were, and not what you initially took them in.

It was in the middle of spring, when the flowers really began blooming, and Keith had found a dried-out petal amongst the bright yellow ones. Maybe that had been a sign, he thought. Maybe it had been the first stone, the first crack, and maybe it was what brought the entire thing crashing down.

Or maybe it was easier to look back and pinpoint sources, to make things easy in defining them.

Mr. Holt was going through Shakespeare, reading off passages from their current topic: _Titus Andronicus._ Keith was trying to take down notes, shifting his gaze to Shiro at the front, who followed Mr. Holt, rapt in attention, barely writing anything. Adam, who was a few seats away, tensed every now and then, and Keith knew it was because he found the work uninspired and unenlightened. Keith, as always, kept himself quiet — not voicing out his own opinions.

Titus Andronicus was a story of revenge, righting wrongs by paying murder with murder. He didn’t know what made it so terribly fascinating to Keith — perhaps it was the violence, or the ridiculous tragedy of it all. Half the things Mr. Holt talked about flew overhead, but Keith understood the gist of it. It felt like a metaphor, the entire play, like it was made as a parody of how fragile things could be. What it meant to be real, to be here and to disappear.

Looking back, Keith realized it may have been a sign. Or a start of one, a growing epiphany that took years in the making, a life he was heading into.

Mr. Holt stopped in his discussion, voice cut unusually short. If Keith were asked to describe how it sounded, it would be similar to a breath stolen from the lungs, a scratch of the record on the first glide of the needle.

He remembered Mr. Holt ending it right before Bassianus was killed and Lavinia was raped, her tongue and hands cut off.

Hadn’t the wind been strangely fast and hard against the glass panes that day? Didn’t the almost-silent thumps sound like the ticking of a clock that he could never find? It had been spring when that happened, yet Keith remembered it seemingly bleak, like a creaking prelude.

Metaphors have always been written to undermine what was horrible, or perhaps what was incredibly true, and replace them with romanticism. Metaphors hid the ugliness of what was real but, sometimes, they heralded a realization itching to dawn.

Mr. Holt cleared his throat, and the silence that followed drew a chill into the room. It wasn’t a chill like the rain, or the whipping breeze brought on by autumn storms. Keith couldn’t describe it now, the same way he couldn’t describe it then, but he remembered setting his pen beside his notebook, remembered Shiro tensing and Adam falling quiet.

It was like certainty — a pervading cold that froze even your guts.

For as long as Keith knew, Mr. Holt had always been on the uncomfortable end of strict. Save for what happened this year, their guardian had always been proper and fair. He would dole out punishments to those who deserved it, and appreciated those who took initiative and were diligent enough. He didn’t look the same now the way he did before, way back when Keith was still nine.

Suddenly, it was like seeing things with a new pair of eyes, and Keith finally saw Mr. Holt for what he was: a tired old man.

A tired and sad old man.

Keith recognized none of that before. He saw all of it, and viewed it as something he wasn’t entirely interested with and ignored it. It was, then, that it really struck home. He was still fifteen.

Now that Keith’s older, it was harder and harder to find excuses like that. Fifteen was a turning point, a line where you could make mistakes and be forgiven for it. After all, the world was still a burgeoning playground and you’ve yet to take a step out of it.

It doesn’t work that way when you’re eighteen, and Keith definitely could not hide behind excuses anymore, the way he did when he was fifteen. When you’re told but not told, and when you’ve understood but never really made to understand.

Mr. Holt stopped talking about Titus, and he dropped the chalk down on the ledger. Keith finally took note of the grey hair amongst the brown, pulled back in a ponytail. He finally noticed the sagging skin under his guardian’s eyes, or the lines around his mouth, those that grew more distinct when he frowned.

“Nadia,” Mr. Holt started, and Keith watched his classmate jump in her seat. “Nadia, what were you saying to Laika?”

Nadia looked bewildered, a bit confused at being put on the spot. Mr. Holt faced her, but Keith felt like he didn’t really look at her than through her, not unlike the way he had been with him for the last few weeks. “Go on, girl, you can spit it out.”

“Um—I,” Nadia started, clearing her throat. “I was telling Laika that I’d like to be an actress someday. L-like Doris Day.”

Mr. Holt nodded, and the rest of the class followed his actions pointedly. “And you were telling Laika that the best chance for you is to go to New York, right?”

Nadia bit her lip, her cheeks crimson, muttering quietly to herself. “Y-yes, Mr. Holt.”

But his gaze was moving over the lot of them. “I know she didn’t mean harm. I know none of you meant harm, but there is too much of this. I hear it all the time, and it’s been allowed to go on, but it’s not right. I won’t stand for this.”

He said the words quickly, hoarsely, and everyone was quiet, unable to look away as Mr. Holt closed the door and turned to them, gaze roving over them but not really seeing them. “If no one else will talk to you, then I will.”

He breathed deep, and wiped his hand down his cheek. “The problem, the way I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, but not made to understand and some people will be happy to leave it that way, but I will not.”

Mr. Holt stepped away from the table, and his footsteps echoed with the same intensity as the wind that continued to push at the windows, like a mini-thunderclap every second or so. He turned to Nadia’s direction. “You’ll never go to New York. You’ll never be actors and actresses and film stars. You’ll never work in supermarkets and be doctors, you’ll never become engineers and musicians. You’ll not sing on stage and play musical instruments.”

Mr. Holt turned, and looked directly at Keith. “You won’t hold babies in your hand, and you won’t become parents. You’ll never make families, and you’ll never have grandchildren.”

His words cut through the quiet, but the silence seemed to be made of stone — not a single one rose to respond. Mr. Holt’s breathing could be heard throughout the room, and the way he gritted his teeth could be felt down to Keith’s very toes. “Your lives have already been set out for you.”

He looked up, eyes wide and hollow, almost invisible in the glare of his glasses. “You’ll become adults, but you won’t become middle-aged. You’ll never know what it’s like to be old. You’ll be eighteen, and you’ll start your donations.”

Wind came knocking again, but for all its worth, it may have come from a very distant end. “You’re not like the actors you see on television, or the characters in your books, or the heroes in your little magazines. You’re not even like me.”

He pointed to himself, thumping his hand against his chest. Keith couldn’t look away, could not unhear his words. “You were made with a purpose. You weren’t even born. You were made to donate your vital organs. You’ll never be able to choose, because we’ve _chosen_ for you. We tried — I tried — we all tried to leave with you a little more. Before you could even live, you have to know what you are and you can’t when you don’t know. We teach you the outside world because—”

Mr. Holt’s breath hitched. “Because you’ll never be able to experience it to the fullest. You’ll never be able to experience what Holden Caulfield did, or walk through markets at night like Sal Paradise did. None of you will ever see the Roman Colosseum, or visit Versailles. None of you will ever get to outer space.”

There was a sucked-in breath, and Keith’s eyes finally shifted from Mr. Holt to Shiro, and the rock-still tension of his shoulders.

Mr. Holt didn’t notice, or didn’t care. “Which is why I don’t want to hear more talk of this. No more of these dreams, of these ambitions. You have a life set out for you, and you can’t choose. You can’t refuse.”

He laughed — briefly, quietly, almost silently — and it was as if he was laughing at himself, but nobody joined. Keith couldn’t even make a sound. There wasn’t anything funny about the laugh, or Mr. Holt’s words — and, years later, they’d better understand the outburst than they had that day.

“I thought,” Mr. Holt began, voice low. He turned away from them, and faced the board. “I thought that—that this was the best. All this time, I thought we were helping you, making your lives a little better, a little fuller. Gave you as much as we could so you would all better understand what it meant to live, to be alive, to know what it’s like to be here. Now. Perhaps we just made it worse.”

The last words were whispered, as if in self-realization.

Mr. Holt cleared his throat, once more, and Keith swore he could hear the hiccup in his voice, but when he turned to face them, his face was devoid of emotion. He looked at each one of them, really _seeing_ them and Keith felt cold all over when Mr. Holt faced him. He shook his head, to himself, and sat on his desk, staring at nothing.

“You poor, poor creatures.”

* * *

“What did you think he meant?” Keith asked, that night, when the rest of his classmates were beginning to fall asleep. Mr. Holt’s outburst wouldn’t be felt until much later, when its impact was at its most devastating. What happened today had been an unusual tirade from their no-nonsense guardian.

Shiro shook his head, lips puckered in consternation. “I dunno. Mr. Holt’s always been straight to the point. The way he was talking, though was really weird.”

Keith nodded along. “He talked to us about donating — like we didn’t know. I mean, we already knew that, right?”

A hum was his response, and Keith turned his head to face the purple-blue sky through the small window panes. There were no stars out — there weren’t a lot of stars out during winter, when the skies were filled with heavy clouds and hail. Things were a lot colder, and he pulled the blanket higher up his person.

“Yeah,” Shiro voiced, after a moment of silence. He turned to Adam, who was tidying the ends of his bed. “What about you, Adam? What did you think about Mr. Holt?”

Adam didn’t answer immediately, settling down his bed and taking his shoes off. Keith watched him arrange them, setting the strings properly and neatly stacking them under his end table. He looked at the ground, deep in thought before looking up. “I’m not really sure. I know what we’re supposed to do, when we get out of here. We’re going to the Colonies and live in the outside world for a bit before we’re called for our first donations.”

Keith cocked his head, looking at his hands. “It’s just weird — it sounded like he wanted us to understand that when we already did. We donate and donate until we complete. I mean, that’s why we’re not allowed to have injuries, right?”

Neither Shiro nor Adam deigned to answer, and Keith breathed out, turning to arrange his pillows against his back. On the other corner of the hall, Lance and Hunk were talking quietly to each other. Keith chanced a look at them before turning back and pulling the power from his lamp. The red band around his wrist glowed dimly, losing most of its strength over the years.

“It’d be weird, if he came back to normal tomorrow, like he never said all that weird stuff.” Shiro commented, scratching his jaw. Keith turned to him, eyeing the shadow of hair down his jaw and chin. It made him look older, less fifteen. He was still singular and dazzling, and Keith felt this sort of calm wash over him every time he caught sight of his best friend — though the facial hair lent him an air of startlingly young adult, stepping into the world as his own man.

In a way, he missed the way Shiro looked when he was nine — the round cheeks, and the nose that wasn’t that straight, and the layer of soft skin. It wasn’t that the Shiro now was hideous, but a part of Keith guessed that it was just the fact that his best friend’s look snuck up on him and knocked him out before he even had a chance to duck.

Would Keith have that — the facial hair, and the thick locks? Would he look as good as Shiro did if he had that? Despite the length of his hair, and the angular form of his face, he didn’t look necessarily older. He didn’t look any younger, too, but that was not the question.

How would Shiro look when he was older, Keith mused. Mr. Holt talked about them never growing old, but that was wrong, wasn’t it? Everyone grew old, everyone aged — they all would start having saggy skin, and grey hair and brittle bones. It was in all the science books they read, in the stories of old kings and queens, every time Mr. Iverson and Mrs. H would greet them and Keith would note her ancient features.

Everyone grew old, and everyone withered. Time took to that.

Keith felt his eyes getting droopy, his vision turning to slits. He continued to watch Shiro, who was talking to Adam, and he took in his nose and jaw.

 _He would look great even when he’s old,_ the thought came. Keith found he didn’t disagree at all. Shiro would have grey hair, and a robust chin, and there’d be fine lines down his jaw. Shiro smiled a lot, and he could imagine the way those lines would curl by his lips. Imagine the scrunching of his nose and the growing discoloration of his skin. He’d still look amazing, that Keith knew. He knew that with the same certainty as he knew every patch of his skin in his body, off the top of his head without the need of a mirror.

Keith didn’t know how he’d look like when he was old, but that wasn’t important. He fell asleep, a smile on his lips, dreaming of age-lined taupe eyes and wise smiles.

* * *

Mr. Holt didn’t show up the next day. When Mr. Griffin finished with History, they waited for their stern guardian to walk in — grey hair in a ponytail bouncing as he walked, always carrying his lesson plan and a literature book, usually of their topic. Today was supposed to be the last few chapters of _Titus Andronicus,_ followed by George Orwell’s _1984._ It was a new book, apparently — and it wasn’t something they’ve been taught before.

The guardian that came in at two o’clock in the afternoon, though, wasn’t their guardian who had the unusual outburst the day before. It was Ms. Ina, her pale hair and that perfunctory smile she constantly had on her face, was the one who walked in, bringing along a Mr. Holt’s book. It wasn’t _1984_.

“Where’s Mr. Holt?” Someone asked, and Keith parroted the question in his head. Ms. Ina placed her stuff on the desk and clasped her hands together, looking over each one of them.

“Mr. Holt, unfortunately, had to call in sick.” She explained, smiling at them. “I’ll be taking over his classes until he gets better, though, so don’t worry about it.”

Somehow, that response seemed to ease most of the class’ curiousity, and Keith didn’t really think about it much, opening his notebook and pulling his pen out. It wasn’t until the morning assembly, that next Monday, where the news drop.

Mr. Holt was no longer a guardian, and was no longer teaching at Edo House.

Mr Iverson stood at the podium, looking over them. “We are grateful for his contributions to this school, and to the students he had taught with much care, but Mr. Holt has decided to go for greener pastures, and he wished all of you goodluck.”

“That was unexpected.” Keith heard Shiro mutter, ignoring Adam’s follow-up comment to it. He nodded, still, staring at the empty chair on the faculty table, between Mr. K and Mr. Griffin.

It wasn’t the absence of their usually strict guardian who seemed tired and sad that day that bothered him. It wasn’t the forlorn looking chair that seemed to grab everyone’s attention the moment Mr. Iverson said what he said. No, it was a different memory in Keith’s head that kept playing over and over, like a broken zoetrope stuck in the synapses of his brain.

It was that spring day, when he was singing along to _If I Go, I’m Goin’,_ a made-up baby in his arms, swaying to the beat as if cherishing him in sleep, and Mr. Holt by the doorway, a hand to his mouth and tears down his face. It was a memory that brought more questions than answers, and it wasn’t until he was eighteen that he realized why it never left his mind.

* * *

It’s at this point, when Keith was seventeen, that he realized how much had changed, and how much distance had grown between him and Shiro. The funny thing — well, funny like puking, funny like having his nerves shot on fire and ripped off his skin, like having the entire world under you crumble with no catch to hold on to — was that it had happened so gradually, so minutely, that it fully escaped his notice. It’s funny, because it also happened to immediately, so exacting, that it felt like a gunshot to his chest — and that’s the weird thing, isn’t it?

He’s never had a bullet lodged into his heart, though he thinks he would know how it would feel like.

He was seventeen, and Shiro was seventeen, and Adam was seventeen, and they were set to join the Colonies — an expedition beyond any of their previous undertakings, an adventure in of itself. They would be set out in groups, to live in special homes outside the parapets of Edo House, together with other students from other schools, and it was a time of adjustment.

A time for them to get to know the real world, and live in it — a year for them to see what it was like out there.

A year, because when they hit eighteen, their donations would begin. They would have finally come of age.

It was an epiphany that didn’t arrive, not until much later when Keith was actually eighteen and finally coming to grips with what Mr. Holt had said all those years ago — when they were told, but not told, and when they were told but not made to understand.

Keith thought that, all along, when they’ve been told they were going to die, they’ve never really understood what they’ve lived through, or felt as if they’ve had enough time.

When you’re told to die, you’re told but not told, you’re told but not made to understand.

Keith had been told, and he’d been told so many times, in so many ways, but he never really took it for what it was and what it was meant for him to understand. He eventually would, there was no doubt about that. It just took losing everything for him to finally realize what they’ve lived through, and where he’s supposed to be.

* * *

Keith was seventeen, and his bag was packed beside him. He only had a burlap duffel bag, and it was a grey-dark brown color. He only had one, all his clothes packed in it. There was not a lot he needed, and all the toys he had gotten in exchange for his tokens were not necessary. When you’re seventeen, a lot of things are not necessary.

Funny, he can’t really remember who told him this — or why, in the first place. Maybe because it brought up a question of necessity, of what was really important and what mattered.

If Keith had been asked, a year ago, what he thought was necessary, he may have needed time to think it through. He would say his clothes were necessary, and he couldn’t survive in the outside world without clothes — nobody could. Food was another thing of importance, and no food would mean starvation. A house, or a shelter to protect you from the elements mattered — and it always helped to have sturdy walls that meet neatly, bricks that were stacked tightly and doors that were sensibly shut to keep the frost and the rain away.

Funny, because Keith knew, with the same intimacy he knew his own thoughts, that those weren’t the first few things he’d say when he would have been asked that question, be it a year ago or now.

No, if someone had asked him: Keith, what would you consider necessary? What would you consider important? What mattered to you?

Standing there, in the foyer of Edo House, with a burlap duffel bag by his feet containing everything he ever had, gazing out into the infinite grass plains and the stone parapets that hid what laid beyond the horizon, he would have not said any of that.

Even at seventeen, or eighteen, should anyone have asked him that question, he would have said only one thing: Shiro.

And, at seventeen, just when they were about to leave the only home and place they’ve ever known their entire lives — a veritable island not unlike the one that trapped the boys in _Lord of the Flies_ — Adam kissed Shiro.

* * *

Keith really didn’t know what to make of it. Things happened too quickly for him to take notice – for him to find the proper way to react. He knew they were close, all three of them were, but Keith never really imagined that it would be like this.

They were waiting out, at the foyer, with the rest of his classmates. It had been a summer morning, when the light hit the right angle and it bled bright gold into the gardens – cutting through grass and the petals. The sky was clear that day, not a single cloud in sight – even the distant summer storms that Keith once believe were permanent fixtures on the horizon were absent. It had been a beautiful morning, when the morning wasn’t too hot, and Keith found no reason to pull out the jacket from his bag.

There were big vehicles approaching – buses, their guardians called it – and they all watched as several of them parked in the fields near the parapets. Keith had been waiting, by the old oak tree, with Adam and Shiro talking behind him. Adam had been asking about Shiro’s things, ensuring that he didn’t forget when they were taking off.

Keith didn’t really feel like joining in. Had Shiro actually forgotten something, like a toothbrush, Keith would have been ready to find one. It was just the way things were when it came to them.

The buses had arrived, and the guardians were ushering them in – and Keith didn’t really understand the importance of that moment, when the idea of leaving Edo House was only a superficial excitement.

It was symbolic. Of course, it was symbolic – but these things were never at the forefront of his mind when they happened. The concept of leaving never really took hold until later – the same way how you never really understand the concept of death until you’ve seen it for its finality.

Keith had ambled up to the bus, pulling his bag along and he had turned, just in time for Adam to smile shyly at his best friend. There was a flush on Shiro’s cheeks, before Adam leaned close and pressed his lips against Shiro’s.

It happened far too quickly, in a split second to be exact, as the guardians started calling them, and Adam and Shiro broke away to grab their bags. Still, the memory of it exacted itself into Keith’s mind so completely, so clearly, that it kept playing over and over, like a second-long motion picture with no beginning or end.

He had taken a seat in the middle part, and Adam and Shiro had taken the bench to his front. Adam gave him a quick smile, putting his bag up, and Shiro still had red on his cheeks. He half-turned to Keith, who can only stare back, still imagining the scene over and over, and Shiro had grinned wide at him, excitement in his eyes.

Keith didn’t feel like smiling back. He honestly didn’t feel like smiling at all. He honestly had no idea _what_ to feel. He didn’t necessarily feel happy, but he also didn’t feel angry or sad. No, what kept rolling over and over in his stomach wasn’t sadness. He recognized sadness – he recognized how it would look, how it would feel. Sure, he has only felt it in very rare moments, but enough to know it what for it was.

This – turbulence in his stomach, this weight, was new and foreign. It was not unlike the way the bus shifted from side to side, causing some of his classmates to yelp in surprise.

Adam and Shiro would follow suit, too, especially when the wheels caught on the rocky footpath, and Adam would shift into Shiro, and Keith watched as Shiro placed an arm around Adam’s waist. The weight in his stomach grew heavier, and he thought of his breakfast and what he had eaten.

It had been a normal breakfast, the same he’s eaten every day of his life, but his stomach was in knots and his hands felt cold and he wrapped them around his belly, wanting it to stop twisting and turning.

Outside, the stone parapets grew nearer and nearer, and Keith turned to face them, to ignore the people before him and the heaviness inside him. He glanced past the dirty window, and the scratches on the arm guard. The stone walls – the parapets – weren’t too tall, now that they were closing in.

All his life, he thought of the walls and their height, and how they covered everything in sight.

The bus was only a few meters away, and Keith pressed his cheek against the glass – the heat of the sunlight catching on it – and took in the stones weathered by age, eroded by rain. They didn’t even seem sturdy, unlike the walls of Edo House. No, they seemed fragile.

His heart was up in his throat as the parapets grew closer and closer, and Keith curled his hands into tight fists.

It was then, the culmination of all his life-long questions, that Keith knew: he was going to find his answer. Beyond these parapets, he would have the answers that would finally, _finally¸_ give voice to the words plaguing his mind over and over.

Edo House grew smaller and smaller in the distance, until it was a speck, a shadow that could even be mistaken for a mirage. The home he’s known all his entire life – the only place he’s ever known a tall – faded beneath the grass blades and the blue sky.

The bus shifted, and the parapets passed by, and Keith – heart in his throat – saw trees, a thousand of them, with endless red leaves.

* * *

He wasn’t sure if it was disappointment, or just the sense of new adventure and the unknown, that bubbled up his throat. Maybe it was a bit of both – that all the fantasies he’s made up in his head on what awaited beyond the parapets were unfound, or perhaps they just continued to lie in wait, until he came across them.

Perhaps reality failed to live up to his expectations, or perhaps he failed to live up to reality.

They were the last few people on the bus, as the others have been dropped by small bungalow-looking houses and as their new home came ever closer, Keith could only watch Adam and Shiro talking to each other, and what it meant for him.

Because what he felt inside, he didn’t know – just that it felt like he was straining farther and farther away.

* * *

There were only two others in their Colony – students from a different school called Marmora. There was a tall man, as tall as Shiro, and he had tanned skin and a genial smile. Dark hair down the sides of his face, and he greeted them with a slap to their shoulders. Keith was actually pushed forward by the slap.

His name was Ulaz, and he lead them in, where another tall man – in fact, Keith once thought they were twins – welcomed them. Thace.

Ulaz was the more approachable of the two, helping them with their bags as the three of them stepped inside. The house wasn’t much – Edo was infinitely larger – but Keith took in the posters on the walls, the covers on the couches and the television in the center of the living room. It was haphazard and lived-in – it felt cozy.

Thace stood by the kitchen door way, where a towel was slung over his shoulder and he watched them all with a polite smile on his face. Keith turned to him, looking away from Adam and Shiro as they talked to Ulaz.

Thace’s hazel eyes met his and the man nodded, and Keith returned the gesture, still clutching the bag to himself.

The entire house felt as if it could have been part of Edo, albeit a smaller, rowdier part. If the guardians weren’t around to remind them to clean up, Edo would have ended looking like this. Beyond the house, the red cedar trees continue to stand upright, crimson leaves reaching to the blue sky. There were barely any car tracks, though there was an old beat-up truck to the side of it. A wind chime hung by the veranda, and it twinkled as a breeze slithered through.

“Keith?” He turned, looking to Shiro. “We’re getting our rooms.”

He looked away from the wind chime and nodded, following them. Ulaz led them to a small staircase, leading up to a second floor. Well, it wasn’t exactly a second floor – more of a partition of it, and not high enough to make the house look taller from the outside.

“Thace and I have a room downstairs, so you guys can have the rooms here.” Ulaz mentioned, and Keith watched his outline as he turned and gestured.

“Do you share a room together?” Adam asked, following him.

Ulaz nodded. “Yeah. Thace and I are together.”

The quiet that followed the announcement caused him to turn to the three of them, slightly worried-looking. “You know what that means, right?”

Shiro gave a low chuckle. “Actually, yes. We do. Adam and I are...well, we’re sort of together.”

Ulaz paused, before grinning wide. “That’s great! Edo, right?”

Adam nodded. “Yes, Edo House. You and Thace are from Marmora?”

The three of them continued to talk amongst themselves as they climbed the steps and reached the landing. Keith followed in their shadows, not really contributing to the conversation. He kept thinking over and over about Shiro’s words, unsure of what he felt for them and what they meant.

If Adam and Shiro were together, where was he then? He could still be Shiro’s best friend, right? Being together didn’t mean that he had to let go, right?

Relationships were never a subject in Edo House, and it was never something that he and Shiro ever brought up a lot in their conversations. It just – Keith just felt weird about it. Not because it was Adam – or maybe it’s because it was Adam—

Keith doesn’t know what to make of it, of the idea that his best friend deciding things and Keith not knowing. Shiro never told him he liked Adam – and he remembered, all those years ago, how Shiro had asked him if he liked anyone.

Keith had answered that he didn’t like anyone, and it was the truth. He never felt what Lotor felt, or what they all heard he felt when he admitted that he liked Romelle – for that brief moment, anyhow. Keith never felt that freefall, or that misstep of a feeling that defined liking someone, defined having a crush.

Shiro had said no, too. He said he didn’t like anyone –

But he has his arm around Adam’s waist, and he leaned close when he talked to Adam, his lips caressing the edges of Adam’s ear and Keith bit his lip hard enough to hurt.

Did Shiro lie? Or, did Shiro stop wanting to share these things with him?

Had he done something, said something that made Shiro trust less in him – had he, in some way, erred on their friendship? Had he been inadequate, for whatever reason there was to cause Shiro not to tell him this?

Or, did Shiro saw him and thought ‘not anymore’. Did Shiro stop thinking of him as his best friend? Had Adam taken that post from under him without Keith noticing?

Keith didn’t know which was worse.

Keith didn’t know what to do if it were either of the two.

Keith was—

Keith was being called.

He looked up. “Yes?”

Shiro and Adam were looking at him, and a bit of concern bled into Shiro’s voice as he repeated something Keith didn’t hear. “I asked if you were okay.”

Ulaz looked at him from over their heads, and Keith shifted his gaze and, for some reason, landed on Adam.

Their bespectacled friend looked back, and there was no animosity or dislike on his features. He looked at Keith with the same mild concern Shiro had, and Keith was confused and unsure. He was unsure of a lot of things.

“I’m okay,” he answered. He lied.

It was the first time he lied to Shiro.

Shiro paused, his lips twitching. “You sure?”

Keith nodded, a bit too fast. “I am.”

He lied again, and he never realized – in that second – how much he’d lie to Shiro. Maybe he was right – maybe Shiro did stop looking at him as the best friend, and maybe started trusting him less.

After all, what best friend trusted a liar, and Keith was a good one, apparently. He lied enough to convince himself.

Maybe it wasn’t just about changing and lying. Maybe, in that moment, they’ve all started letting go.

* * *

Shiro and Adam shared a room together. Keith had one to himself – a small one, and if it were a bit smaller, it would be a cupboard. He would fall asleep, pillow pressed against the wall, and he tried so hard to think of anything else –

But the walls were not sturdy, they were thin. The ceiling was slow, and the doors could never be properly shut. Shiro and Adam’s voices carried through, and Keith started wearing headphones to sleep.

* * *

Ulaz and Thace kissed. A lot.

The first time it happened, all three of them stared in unabashed wonder. Keith couldn’t look away, especially since his seat at the dinner table was facing the stove, where Thace held reign over. Ulaz had walked in, rubbing sleep off his eyes, a hand scratching at his exposed belly where his shirt had ridden up.

Maybe it was because they knew Adam and Shiro were together, or maybe it was because they have spent longer a time in this house than the Edo students. Maybe it was neither of the two or both of them altogether.

Ulaz had walked up to Thace, throwing a half-grumbled greeting over his shoulder and grabbed the other Marmoran by the waist. Ulaz angled his face, and Thace smiled at him a second before their lips met.

Adam actually made a sound, a quiet ‘oh!’, before he turned his head down, face red. He didn’t know how Shiro reacted, perhaps distracted by Adam.

Keith couldn’t look away – from his vantage, he could see it all in clear detail. Thace opened his mouth, and Keith watched a pink tongue trail up Ulaz’s upper lip, and he watched him open his mouth too. They did something with their tongue, and somehow the wetness and the intimacy of it – Ulaz and Thace’s eyes were closed – had Keith feeling red on his cheeks and looking away.

Ulaz would laugh about it a second after, and Shiro would chuckle and the tension would disappear. Keith, however, struggled to look at any of them in the eye.

He kept his eyes on his plate, and when Thace took a seat next to him, he settled his gaze on the other’s hair instead of his eyes as he thanked him.

* * *

Ulaz didn’t let them just sit on their butts at the Colony. He had them help him with errands – grocery shopping, visiting the city nearby, paying the bills. He would sometimes take Adam, or Shiro or Keith on whatever endeavor he wanted them to be familiar with.

“You gotta know this,” He said to Keith, a hand on the steering wheel. Keith turned to him, feeling the wind in his face from the passenger’s seat. “Especially when you want to be a carer. Nobody’s gonna help you out, so you have to learn to help yourself, alright?”

“Carer?” Keith asked, unfamiliar with the term. The trees continued to rush past them, and a few rocks in the way caused the truck to jump.

“Yeah, a carer. You can jump to being a donor ASAP, or if you want to help other donors out first, you can be a carer.” Ulaz answered. He wasn’t looking at Keith, but kept his eyes on the road, a hand on the stick shift – Keith thought that was what Ulaz called it. “Not a lot of us wanna be carers, though. It’s a difficult life.”

“Why?” The job sounded a lot _less_ difficult, if he were to be honest. Ulaz pursed his lip, chin shifting.

“As a carer, you can’t just take care of anyone. It’s the state and the system that chooses the donors you care for. What makes it difficult though is that you gotta keep moving, getting to your donors. Oh, and you can’t be a carer for a donor who came from the same school.”

Keith looked outside, at the rushing trees. In between the spaces, he could see the distant city already – the tall buildings, steel-lined, and glowing silver in the daylight. “You mean, if I became a carer, I can’t be around Shiro and Adam?”

Ulaz shook his head. “Nope. Not unless the system decides that you’ll have to care for them, but generally, no. In fact, most carers never meet donors from the same school. Donors don’t usually get past their third or fourth donation. They get agitated by the second, and after the third, it’s usually completion.”

It was silent after that, and Keith settled against the seat. There was a small bobble head toy taped to the dashboard. Its head continued to tilt its head from side to side. The skyscrapers grew closer, and Keith could see their glass panes reflecting the blue sky.

“Ulaz,” he asked, later, when the man started to turn a corner to the convenience store they usually went to. “What are you and Thace going to do?”

He was curious – wondering whether they would be donors together. They were a couple, after all, and being a carer meant that they could not be together. It would be difficult for a couple not to be together.

Ulaz stopped mid-drop from the seat, right hand gripping the steering wheel. There was a ring, on his fourth finger – a simple band – but it shone in the light. Keith remembered a similar-looking ring on Thace’s hand, too.

Ulaz doesn’t answer him, and Keith doesn’t press him for one. He’s getting used to it.

* * *

They all settled into the house amicably. Thace and Adam shift turns cooking their food, and Shiro and Ulaz deal with the slight repairs needed around the house. Keith found going to the city easier for him – getting the groceries, paying the bills, running errands. It was like he was made for venturing beyond the Colony.

He didn’t talk to the other people – especially in the city. He would go where he needed to go, find the things he needed to find and pay for it with his head bowed. He didn’t look at anyone, he didn’t _bump_ into anyone.

He did well with blending into the background, keeping his head down and making sure he returned in one piece. It wasn’t difficult – almost everyone around him didn’t really take notice of him, or were too engrossed in their mobile phones, their books, or whatever it was in their hands that distracted them. It was a world of distractions, and he could flit in and out without issue.

Being away from the Colony made it easier, too. It made the questions and the confusion, the weight in his chest, easier to handle when Adam and Shiro weren’t physically in front of him – to remind him of what he can’t put to name.

Because the ease that they lived in had somehow convinced Adam and Shiro that it was okay – to hold hands over the table during dinner, for Shiro to rub his thumb across Adam’s cheek, or for Adam to lay his head against Shiro’s shoulder as they watched television together.

Or for Shiro to hold Adam’s cheek so carefully, tenderly, and lean close to kiss him – the way Thace and Ulaz did.

Being away from the Colony made it easier – easier to deal with the ugly weight in his chest, and down his veins and up his heart; easier to deal with the flush that rose to his cheeks the moment they kissed, and the powerful curiousity – the edge to ask: how does it feel? How does it taste? How do you kiss, and why do people kiss each other?

A part of him wants it answered, as he laid in bed, listening to Shiro and Adam talk, and his hand would come up his lip, feeling the soft skin. He’d imagine pressure on it, maybe it would feel like a tongue on it? He’d lick his lips and it wouldn’t feel any different – he couldn’t imagine how it would feel like.

Then, without compulsion – and he didn’t force it on himself – he would think of Shiro.

He would think of Shiro, and he would think of Shiro gently touching him – putting a hand up to thumb his chin, his weight over Keith.

Keith would feel his cheeks flush harder, redder, and he couldn’t say anything and he couldn’t _think_ of anything else as taupe-eyes looked deep into his, that shadow of a beard on his chin tickling Keith’s jaw, and he’d smile – the way he always did for Keith, that tight-lipped smile that grew rarer and rarer these days—

He’d whisper Keith’s name, like a promise, and Keith would feel hot all over—

He’d feel like he was not real, like he was floating somewhere, derealized, out of his own body. It would be crazy, because he would also feel _too_ real, he would feel every graze of Shiro’s hand, every graze of his best friend’s weight on him, every movement against Keith’s body and it would electrifying and hot, like lightning and molten fire down veins, and Keith would not be able to quiet the hitches in his throat, the trembling of his lips or the sounds squeaking up his depths.

Shiro would press his lips to Keith, and Keith would tingle all over, like he was covered in ants except – it wasn’t unpleasant, no. It wasn’t terrifying. It would—

It would feel good. It would feel too good.

Because Keith was Shiro’s best friend – he still was, right?

And didn’t best friends made each other feel good?

* * *

He doesn’t know what time it was, when he walked down to the kitchen. In the Colony, there were no guardians watching your every move, waiting to punish you for every toe out of line. Keith had gotten thirsty, unable to fall asleep. He could hear Shiro snoring from the next room – Adam never did – and Keith turned in his bed, standing up when he couldn’t fall asleep.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it – stop thinking about the kiss, and whether it felt good or bad.

He couldn’t fall asleep, not when it was playing over and over every time he so much as closed his eyes.

The kitchen was quiet, and so was the living room. The lower floor was dark, and the only light that seeped in through the drapes were from the lamps in the veranda. He was barefoot, light, trying to make sure he didn’t make any sound. He didn’t want anyone else to wake up – especially Shiro and Adam.

More and more, he didn’t want to look at Shiro. He felt like he could breathe easier if he just didn’t.

He grabbed a glass off the shelves and opened the faucet slowly, quietly. There was no sound except for the rushing of the water and Keith’s own breathing, the amber lamplight filtering in through dark red drapes, giving colour to old green wallpaper.

He stopped, hearing what could be chatter. He turned, eyeing Thace and Ulaz’s door – it was ajar, and he could make out soft light from it. The sound came again, and Keith – curious – left the glass in the sink.

He stepped closer, hoping his footsteps wouldn’t echo or creak. The nearer he got, the lesser the distance between the door and him, the louder the sound became. It sounded like someone was panting, and grunting – and he heard Ulaz say Thace’s name.

There was no sound after that, except the sound of something being slapped – like skin on skin – and Keith knew he shouldn’t. All his life, growing up at the Colony, he was taught that privacy was important and what wasn’t made explicitly for you was off-limits.

He was used to the sensibly shut doors, some of them in his face, but here – in the Colony – those rules didn’t apply, right?

Keith stepped closer, and he stilled, smelling something like sweat and another thing he can’t name. His hands curled into a fist as he slowly peeked in, making sure he was in the shadows.

The lamplight was low, bathing the room softly. There wasn’t anything shocking about the room – a cabinet, a few things on chairs and a bed. No, what pulled Keith’s attention were Thace and Ulaz.

The two men were naked, down to their bare feet, and the amber light painted shadows over Ulaz’s back, putting definition to his muscles. He couldn’t see Thace entirely, but he knew the other man was below Ulaz, could recognize the nicked shin anywhere as it wrapped itself around Ulaz’s waist, linking with the other.

He could see Thace’s face, eyes lidded low as they stared into Ulaz’s, crimson cheeks and sweaty skin and a mouth agape as choked moans escaped his throat.

Ulaz shifted, and Keith’s eyes widened, falling to Ulaz’s rear where his penis was pushing in and out of Thace, a cyclical motion that kept the bed creaking, and every push of Ulaz into Thace had the man grunting and moaning out Ulaz’s name.

Keith pressed himself against the wall, unable to pull his gaze away – engrossed in the sounds and the motion of Ulaz’s penis rushing in and out, over and over. Something leaked from Thace, something clear, and he watched – chest tight and hands gripping the wall hard – as Ulaz’s penis slipped out, and something dripped unto the bed below.

Thace moaned, a whine in his throat and Ulaz chuckled a bit – Keith had no idea why he was chuckling, there was nothing funny about what was happening – before he leaned close and kissed Thace on the lips, and creeped a hand down to hold his penis. He angled it back into Thace, all the while never breaking his lips away from his partner.

He plunged in, and out again, and Thace’s arms wrapped themselves around Ulaz’s rear, pulling at his buttocks, as if he wanted Ulaz’s penis deeper. Keith shook his head, bewildered at the notion, and can only imagine what it must feel like.

“’Laz,” Thace moaned out. “I’m c-close.”

Close to what, Keith had no idea. He couldn’t take his eyes off of them, watched as Ulaz nodded and whispered something. A phrase Keith’s never heard before, and though he forgot it in the seconds after, it would haunt him over and over.

Ulaz and Thace kissed, but kept their eyes open, and Ulaz started pushing his penis in and out, faster and harder. If Keith would compare it something he knew, it was like mashing potato, the motion of his hand as he broke the solids into a gooey paste.

Then, Thace moaned, and Ulaz followed right after and Keith watched as Ulaz’s scrotum _tightened_ and his penis twitched repeatedly, still inside Thace. The couple continued to kiss through it, and when Ulaz pulled himself out of Thace, something white trickled out.

Ulaz turned, shifting in bed to lie against Thace, and when his face turned to the door, Keith was gone.

* * *

It wasn’t something he brought up, ever. Especially when he heard the same sounds come from Adam and Shiro’s room. Somehow, the idea of Adam and Shiro doing it – doing whatever Thace and Ulaz did – made him feel so heavy and weak, that he had to sit and breathe deep.

He knew the notion of sex. He was familiar with it – the ins and outs, the biology and the mechanism to it. Their guardians have attested to how well they taught the subject.

Yet, he never really took it to heart until he saw it happen before him. He never guessed the intimacy, the softness, how utterly bare and vulnerable one was until that situation – when you were nothing and everything, sharing a part of you with someone you trust. It wasn’t something he never knew would affect him in such way, and when he bit his lip and took a chance, peeking into Shiro and Adam’s room, and saw them as bare as Thace and Ulaz, the same rocking motion, the same kisses and the same liquids trickling out—

He didn’t know what to make of his own chest tightening so much it felt like he would break.

* * *

“Keith,” Shiro called out. “Hey, where you off to again?”

“Shopping,” Keith answered, not looking at Shiro as he climbed the truck. “Got errands to do.”

Shiro cocked his head but Keith didn’t look at his face. “Oh, okay, you want me to help you? We haven’t talked in a while, you kn—“

“It’s fine,” Keith’s voice was abrupt, cutting Shiro off, words trailing awkwardly. “I gotta go.”

He didn’t wait for Shiro to answer.

* * *

“What’s that?” He asked, pointing to something downtown. It was Thace with him, taking the truck out to go to the supermarket. Keith always volunteered whenever any of the Marmorans needed help in the city. Neither Adam nor Shiro knew how to drive, but Ulaz insisted one of them learn, and somehow chose Keith.

Maybe it was because Keith chose to go to the city often, to escape the sight of his best friend and the image of Shiro having sex with Adam in his mind; or, perhaps, Ulaz already saw something Keith wouldn’t see until later.

He pointed to a building, in between a couple of pubs. It was painted in dark colors, and the front door said CLOSED, which was unlike most of the other stores. It was ten in the morning, after all.

There was a sign hanging up front, and he saw closed neon light that would glow red, outlining a woman’s upper torso.

Thace turned his head to look and paused. “It’s a club.”

“A club?” Keith repeated. “What’s a club?”

Thace turned the truck to a corner, the club disappearing from Keith’s view. It took him a while to answer, and Keith settled with watching the familiar stores pass by. “It’s a bit like a place where people have fun. People drink and dance, and hook up, I guess.”

Keith frowned. He didn’t get why many of the other people needed places to eat and dance. They could very much do it in the comfort of their homes. After all, what was stopping Shiro from doing that waltz dance with Adam in the living room? “Hook up?”

Thace nodded. “Sex.”

Keith turned to him. “Sex? People have sex there?”

“Well, not entirely,” Thace reasoned, turning to flag the driver behind him. He turned left, down two more streets where the supermarket was. “Some clubs have rooms where people can have sex, but others don’t. So, it’s up to the patrons – the person who wants the sex – to look for a place.”

“Why would they go there? Don’t they have other people for that?” Keith asked, watched Thace turn to him for a bit, eyeing him. He didn’t know what the other saw in him, but there was a look of contemplation there.

“Not everyone has that person, you know. I,” Thace paused, before turning back to him. “I have Ulaz, but not everyone has a partner.”

“Shiro has Adam.” Keith commented, voice blank. Thace didn’t answer, not yet, but he did turn to Keith once before nodding, finding the other had returned his gaze outside.

It was left unspoken that Keith had no one.

* * *

“I’m going to head out.” Keith announced, walking down the stairs. He had his jacket on, and his hiking boots. It wasn’t terribly cold out, but with autumn in the corner, it was getting windy. Shiro and Adam turned to him from the couch, and Keith ignored their linked hands.

Ulaz was taking a shower, if the running water was any indication, but Thace poked his head out from the kitchen. “What for?”

Keith raised the truck keys – the one Ulaz entrusted him because Shiro almost crashed the truck into a tree, and Adam panicked before he even took a seat. “I forgot to gas her up.”

The lie came easily to his lips. The truck’s meter was full.

Adam nodded at him, turning his view back to the television. Shiro looked at him, and Keith chanced a glance back. There was no smile on his face, and Keith finally realized that it was the first time he looked at Shiro in over a month.

Shiro looked polite – no trace of that smile, or the gentleness of his taupe eyes. It was as if Keith was a passing acquaintance.

Keith looked away, before his knees shook and lost strength. His vision blurred, and Thace continued to stare at him. “Don’t you want dinner?”

Keith shook his head, taking the chance to turn and grab his coat. “I’ll eat once I’m back.”

Thace called out to him, and Keith half-turned, keeping his gaze on the carpet. Shiro hadn’t said a single word. “Yeah?”

“Be careful out there.”

Keith doesn’t deign him with an answer, pocketing the state money in his jacket. The door shut loudly behind him.

* * *

The club was bright red when the lights were on, but it wasn’t like Keith noticed that.

He was in the alley beside it, watching the patrons flock in and out of the entrance. They had women, sometimes men, on their arms, dressed skimpily. He watched a young girl, probably younger than Keith, kiss a man old enough to be her grandfather full on the lips. He watched as the man’s hand fell on to her buttocks, barely covered in a skirt that came half-way up, and grabbed it.

“Want some action, darlin’?” A voice echoed and Keith turned to find a man leaning against the wall of the bar. He had dark hair, and tanned skin. He was dressed in leather jeans, and a jacket with no undershirt. Dark nipples, erect in the cold, spied him from under the folds of his jacket.

A predatory grin was on his face.

Keith swallowed, and nodded.

* * *

He doesn’t know how long he was sitting there, by the fountain in the park. It was almost midnight, probably, and the guy – the hooker – had left more than an hour ago. Keith didn’t really care where the guy went, with the money he got from lying.

He doesn’t know how long he sat there, a hand in the bubbling water. His skin felt cold and rubbed raw, and he felt weird about the wetness down his buttocks, in between his scrotum and perineum.

He doesn’t know what to make of the wetness oozing out of him.

When Ulaz and Thace were having sex – when Adam and Shiro were having sex – he could see that they both were erect, just as affected as the other. The intimacy was present, shared, and it was obvious – even to Keith, who could only recite the technicalities.

Keith didn’t get hard, not even once. He had been on his fours, on the ground of the alley where someone’s vomit was splattered a few feet away. His jeans were pulled down, and he felt the man’s penis slam itself into him.

All he remembered was the excruciating pain – burning, like fire to his skin – that he had to put a hand against his mouth, didn’t matter that he just had it on the ground, just so he could stifle his sob. The man continued to push in and out, over and over, and the pain never really let up –

It never went away, and it went over and over and over, like someone had thrust a sharp object down his throat only to pull it out and shove it back in.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, waiting for the man to finish because he couldn’t understand – he didn’t understand, at all.

He didn’t understand how something this painful and terrifying could look so intimate, so soft and so beautiful that it brought tears to Keith’s eyes the moment he had shoved himself in bed, seeing the emotion in Ulaz and Thace’s eyes.

All he felt was white-hot pain and deep-seated terror, and when the man finished, and he felt something wet drip down, Keith took the money from his pocket and watched as the hooker went off, leaving him in the dark.

The park was quiet, empty – devoid of people. Funny, how fitting the description was. He felt nothing – nothing at all. No heaviness in his chest, no anger spiking, no sadness threatening to consume him.

Keith curled into himself, pressed his head against the stone fixture and sobbed into his chest.

* * *

When he got home, Thace was waiting for him in the living room. There was no sign of Shiro or Adam.

“Where’s Ulaz?” He asked, putting the keys up the chain behind the door. He locked after himself, turning to face the other man. Thace gestured to their bedroom, never pulling his eyes from Keith.

Keith nodded, turning to the staircase. He just wanted to go to sleep.

“Are you okay?” Thace asked, when Keith was on the fourth step. All the while, he simply watched Keith climb.

Keith shook his head, before whispering. “I’m okay.”

* * *

It was the first time they went to the city, all of them. Thace and Ulaz were at the front, Ulaz on the wheel. Keith was in the back, with Shiro and Adam.

He was sitting next to Adam, who was at the center, and Shiro on the other side.

Ulaz talked to the others about the sights, the buildings and the areas. Adam and Shiro didn’t get to go to the city as often as Keith did, and he zoned out Ulaz’s words. Cheek pressed against the glass, Keith watched the throngs of people pass by – heads bowed, on their phones, not looking up at them as they drove by.

He watched the skyscrapers, and ignored the reflection of Adam and Shiro’s linked hands.

Keith wondered how it would feel, to reach so high that his tops reached the clouds, while his ends remained on earth. If he were that tall, would he be able to reach the stars, look past the fluffy white lingering against the sky, and see what waited beyond?

The sky was not unlike the distant line in the horizon outside Edo House, where he waited to discover what laid beyond the parapets and the endless green fields. Perhaps, this was just another Edo House, another line for him to cross.

They were all heading to the city, and Keith remembered the buzz the last few days ago. Ulaz had brought news when he got home, swearing that he may have seen Adam’s Possible.

A Possible was the original person they were made from, the person whose genetic material was copied and nurtured, built in labs until it formed a fetus. The fetus would then be raised, until it formed a baby. A creature, an exact replica of a person.

When that baby came of age, when that baby reached eighteen, that baby would start its donations.

Keith ignored the way Adam gripped Shiro’s hand so tightly. He could hear Shiro comforting him, assuring him that it would be fine.

Keith kept quiet about his doubts, kept them to himself as he continued to look out the car. He watched the alley ways and the dirty ground, and the trash bins fallen over. He watched the people walk past it, without turning to acknowledge the mess.

A man was by them, sifting through the mess, opening black bags. Keith imagined the feel of the garbage in his hands, and the smell of the food long spoiled up in his nostrils. He compared it to the others walking past, in their business suits and dresses, clean and stylish. They didn’t acknowledge the man rifling through the garbage. No, to them, he was invisible.

The car moved, and sped away. Keith would forget the man, but he would not forget the feeling of being invisible.

* * *

The diner was quiet, which was not surprising considering there were only five patrons – them. The sound of the ceiling fan rotating from above had Keith looking up, every now and then. It wasn’t a remotely fancy diner. It seemed the type to serve passing truckers and motor cyclists, looking around at the worn couch leather. The glass windows weren’t bad, but they weren’t clean.

The smell of coffee and eggs pervaded the room, and Keith turned when a waitress came up to their table, slapping a menu down.

Keith stared at it, before turning to Shiro and Adam – watching the same confusion on their face. Ulaz chuckled to himself and ordered the first breakfast set – eggs, bacon and coffee – for two.

The waitress turned to Keith, a bored look on her face. Keith bit his lip and ordered the same. Adam and Shiro echoed the same thing, and Keith watched an amused smile play on Thace’s lips.

The waitress walked off and Ulaz rubbed his jaw. “Well, I should have guessed that would happen.”

“I mean, it is our first time.” Shiro opened, and Adam nodded beside him. Keith looked away, turning his gaze at the passing trucks on the road beyond the glass windows.

“Well, we didn’t really bring you here for crappy food.” Ulaz said, sitting up. Keith turned to him, and did not miss the dirty look thrown Ulaz’s way from the waitress now attending to the condiments in disarray. He turned to look at Thace, who had the same expression on his face as Ulaz.

“We’re here for my Possible, right?” Adam asked, looking serious. Ulaz nodded.

“Don’t worry, we didn’t make that up.” Keith felt Adam visibly deflate, relaxing.

“Oh, alright, then.” Adam started. “What are we here for?”

Ulaz looked at Thace for a moment, and held his hand tighter. “We want to know if the deferral is real.”

“The deferral?” Shiro asked, confused. Ulaz nodded, continuing. “Yes, the deferral. We heard that it was an option, for Edo students. That’s why you have that potluck thing, right? To prove to the donation programme that if you were able to create something, that you had _souls,_ you can defer your donations?”

Keith looked at them, unfamiliar with the term, or the hope on the other two’s faces. “We’ve never—”

Ulaz turned from Shiro to him, and his smile deflated a bit. “You have heard about it, _right?_ I mean, you guys are from Edo.”

Keith turned to Adam and Shiro in alarm, unsure of what Ulaz was getting at. Adam shook his head, while Shiro frowned. “Ulaz, Thace, we’ve never _had_ a deferral in Edo. We don’t know what that means.”

Ulaz stilled, and Thace’s eye widened as his hand grew tighter around his partner. His voice was wobbly as he spoke. “You’re joking, right? I mean, we’re — we’re in _love._ We can’t start donating yet, and everyone heard of the deferral from Edo. You’re joking, right?”

Thace looked to Keith, desperate for assurance. “Right?”

Keith couldn’t say anything, and he shook his head. Ulaz pressed his hand to his mouth as his eyes reddened, and Thace’s chin trembled. Adam and Shiro were still beside him, and Keith didn’t know what to do, gripping his own hand tight. “Please tell me the deferral is real. Please tell me.”

But Keith can’t lie, and he certainly can’t lie about what he doesn’t know. So, he kept his mouth shut, and counted in his head, and followed the sound of his own breathing, just to mask the awareness of Thace’s hand gripping the table tightly, or the stuttering of Ulaz’s own breath.

The table became awfully quiet after that.

* * *

They continued to the city, but it was uncomfortably silent in the car. Thace didn’t speak, and Ulaz refused to look at them. Adam and Shiro talked quietly to each other, and Keith gazed outside. They didn’t know how to broach the subject of a deferral, especially when Keith had no idea what that meant.

Maybe later, they could iron out what happened. Now, though, was time for Adam’s Possible.

They headed to the metropolitan part of the city, where more and more people in business suits walked. Steel-lined buildings littered the sides of the street, and wide LED screens displayed ads in colorful graphic. Ulaz parked the truck near a circular office with glass windows.

“Saw him there,” he said, voice rough. He didn’t say anything after that, and Keith glanced at Adam and Shiro before getting out. He felt the two may need some time alone, and urged Adam and Shiro to look themselves.

“Are you ready?” Shiro asked Adam, and Keith ignored the way he leaned close to the other. He looked at the building, then to the pier beside it — the long wooden port devoid of people.

He heard Adam say something before feeling him walk past Keith. Shiro followed, after, and Keith looked at him. His best friend didn’t turn to meet his gaze, and Keith swallowed a deep breath, trailing behind.

Adam stood outside the glass windows, and pressed his hands to it, peeking in. Shiro followed, standing beside him.

Keith would have been content to stand and let them do whatever they needed to do, but the curiosity in him was overpowering. He pressed himself next to Shiro, and raised his hands and peeked in.

It was an office, no doubt, where people were dressed in suits, sitting behind computers and answering phones. To the right, where a conference table stood, there were a few around it in chairs. He looked at the one nearest to the edge, who wore a dark suit. His hair, though, was distinct even at a distance. From behind, the man looked like Adam.

The man who looked like Adam was talking to a woman, who took a glance their way and paused in their conversation. She raised a hand, and Keith heard Adam take a deep breath behind him.

The man turned his head.

* * *

“Adam,” Shiro called, running after Adam who was walking to the port. He turned to Keith, worry on his face, and it was the first time he made eye contact with Keith in a long while — or the first time Keith allowed himself to look at Shiro in the eye. “Adam, come on, please.”

Keith followed them both, trying to catch up as Adam ran for the end, near the sea.

He had no idea what was happening — when the man had turned, and they realized it wasn’t Adam — their friend had took off without warning. Shiro got to Adam, and turned him around. “Come on, tell me what’s going—”

“This was a mistake!” Adam cried, pushing Shiro away. Keith saw surprise and hurt on his features. “Adam, what—”

“We’re not _like_ them. Don’t you get it? Don’t any of you get it?” Adam growled, running his fingers through his hair. He pointed to the office, where the man they thought his Possible was. “I had thought. I had thought that if I could meet him, meet the person I was made from, I could be. I could be _like_ him.”

“Adam—”

“What was I thinking? Why did I think I could be anyone else? I wasn’t — I’ll never be _him._ I won’t be _him._ ”

Keith didn’t know what Adam was talking about, and neither did Shiro. Ironic, because a year later, he would know _exactly_ what he was talking about. He would look back on this moment and realize what had been going on.

But, now, their friend was talking nonsense and wouldn’t listen to either of them.

Adam turned to the sea, and before Keith or Shiro could do anything, he screamed.

* * *

It seemed like things had fallen apart, that day. Ulaz and Thace couldn’t bring up any semblance of cheer, not after what happened in the diner. There was only a tense silence every time they all were in the same room, and Adam was no better. Sometimes, he’d stand outside and look at the forest, and other times, he’d walk past Keith’s room and just look at him. He’d stand outside, and Keith would look up, and he’d look back for an entire minute.

Ever since they went to the city to look for Adam’s Possible, it seemed like whatever held them up had started to crack, and Keith woke up, one day, to find Shiro in his room.

His best friend was at the door, and Keith had been asleep, eyes blinking open when he realized he wasn’t alone. “Shiro—?”

Shiro didn’t say anything, he simply stared at Keith. No, not stared at Keith — he didn’t even look like he could see Keith. His eyes were blank, and he seemed to be looking somewhere only he could see.

Keith sat up, blanket falling to his lap. There was a piece of paper in Shiro’s hand, and he turned to find Shiro’s other hand in a fist, trembling slightly. “Shiro?”

“Adam,” Shiro said, voice wobbly. “Adam’s gone.”

“What?”

Shiro finally looked at him. “Adam left to sign up as a donor.”   


	2. Silence Lay Steadily

PART II: SILENCE LAY STEADILY

* * *

 

 

It’s been a year since Keith last saw Adam and Shiro. Ever since that day with Adam’s Possible, and with Adam leaving, Keith has never really thought about the Colony. He only remembered that what he had been straining to reclaim was a line long cut.

He signed up to be a carer after that. Perhaps it was because he wanted to put some distance between him, the Colony and his future. Perhaps because it was the easiest and fastest way to escape the heaviness in his chest, so that he would not have to think of how much it hurt to look at Shiro.

Being a carer was, if he were to be honest, a bit unlike what he had done in the Colony. He looked after people, but in his case, he focused on one.

He would not say it was enjoyable – but others would. That was the thing, wasn’t it?

It was not about what  _he_ thought, but what others thought. At this point in time, he’d been carer to a handful of donors over the first few months. He wouldn’t say anything about it, but it was the comments that reached his ears – every time the head nurse would reach out to the donor system’s spokesperson.

Keith was a good carer. He attended to his donors splendidly, they would say.  _He knows how to calm them down,_ one would say.  _He takes good care of them, and his donors never get agitated, not until their third donation at least!_

It was the recurring description – he was good at what he did. He knew how to talk to his donors, to listen to them about their needs and, if they needed it, how to kick them out of their stupor. The matter of ‘agitation’ was entire thing altogether – after all, nobody could help it if the body decided to give out, no matter how far along they were on the donation line.

Some donors gave out after the first donation, others on the second. Some made it to their third and fourth. Nobody went past the fourth.

Still, it was one of the few things he could be proud of – if such a feeling was even allowed to someone like him. Keith was there for his donors, to hold their hands when they needed it, to greet them as they’re brought back from the operating room, one organ short than before.

It wasn’t hard, Keith thought. It wasn’t hard to be a good carer.

Perhaps it was because he saw them. He looked at his donors in the eye and saw them. Not a lot of people can say that – not when it came to people like them.

Still, good or no, getting used to the loss and the completion was different. Keith wouldn’t say he was used to it, but when that was the natural conclusion of life – what more was there for him to care for?

It was not getting used to it, no. Perhaps something close to that, something almost like moving on, but not. Keith does not know how to describe it, and he cannot even pull up a name for it in his head, but it was what it was.

Keith has had to deal with loss, more often than not. Looking back, he should not be surprised – after all, he had lost a lot of things, the day he took that first step beyond the parapets of Edo House.

Maybe it was about getting ready, or ensuring that he was strong enough to handle the loss. Not everyone is wired for it, but Keith grew on it – whether it was consciously or not, that didn’t matter. What was important—

What was necessary was that he knew how to keep breathing and that he knew how to keep stepping forward even when the emptiness threatened to bring him to his knees.

After all, wasn’t that what this journey was all about? Moving forward?

He had never realized, had never really looked at things for the way they were – he had been aiming for what lay beyond the line, and the next one after that, over and over, in so many ways. He thought of the endless grass fields that he believed needed an end, he thought of the stone parapets that climbed to the heavens but were shorter, in reality. He thought of the tall skyscrapers reaching past the clouds and into the stars beyond.

Keith had spent most of his life waiting, in that one place, waiting for that line to come close or for it to disappear entirely, waiting for something to answer all the questions he has piled up his life.

Believing that maybe all the things he had long lost had piled beyond it, like shards on the grass. Keith would like to see that, he really would.

And, maybe then, he would finally be told and he’d understand – what he’s gone through, and where he’s supposed to be.

* * *

The camera in his hands was heavy, but Keith didn’t really take note of it. The door behind him clicked, and he walked down the hall. A couple of nurses passed by him, but they kept their eyes forward. Keith didn’t bother greeting them, intent on reaching that ward at the end of the hall.

Hallways were unusual – just a long line of white, a number of doors on either side or none at all, and the end waiting for you. Once you reached it, you were there. Maybe things were just a series of hallways, already set with a beginning and an end.

He knocked on the door and pushed it open. The windows that were installed in the doors were covered, a sign plastered up the front. FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

The ward was empty, a series of beds that waited for no one, and curtains pulled open – save the last one, by the window. Keith dropped his bag to the empty chair beside it, crossing over.

His shadow cast over the patient resting on it, and Keith smiled as Allura opened her eyes.

“Hey there, princess.” He greeted, and she smiled back, albeit tiredly. Her pale hair was loose, draped over her shoulders. Keith sat on the chair, pulling it close. He rested his elbows on the mattress, cocking his head at her. “Missed me?”

Allura blinked at him, slowly, before turning her head away. Keith didn’t feel bothered – Allura often got this way, especially when she was in one of her spells. He busied himself by checking the clipboard attached to the top of her bed. She was on her second bag of nutrients for that day, and Keith took a glance up to check the IV line.

The bag was full, having recently replaced. Keith returned the clipboard, and grabbed the plate on the table beside it, where a few apples were placed.

Grabbing one, he started cutting it to small cubes, humming to himself. Outside, the bustle of the afternoon traffic thumbed gently at the window, almost like a silent buzz in Keith’s ears.

He would have turned the radio on, maybe switch to a station that played quieter songs, but it was too far away and he made himself cut the apple into straight cubes. Allura found it tiring to chew, sometimes – this way, she wouldn’t be wasting it and could just swallow it up.

“Thirsty.” He looked up, hearing her thin voice. She was awake, barely, but her lips were moving, as if trying to dispel the parchedness. Keith set the plate aside and grabbed a cup. There was a pitcher on a table next to it, and poured enough to fill half of it.

“Here you go,” Keith gestured, bringing the paper cup to her lips. Allura raised her head, slowly bending down and Keith tipped it – lightly – letting it drip instead of rush into her mouth. Donors like her, who often transitioned from lucid to tired, could choke one something as simple as that. “Feel better?”

She nodded, after a few seconds. Keith set the cup aside, and brushed the hair away from her face with a hand. “Hungry? I cut apples.”

Allura’s blue-eyed gaze followed his form for a moment before shaking her head. “Wanna see.”

Keith smiled at her, putting the plate away. He leaned forward and grabbed the camera from his bag. It was an old thing – unlike the ones on display in the shops downtown. Still, it worked, and it served his purpose. He pressed the menu button and went to the gallery, setting it to its biggest size. “I wasn’t able to print it out yet, but I’m sure you wanna see it as soon as possible, right?”

She didn’t say anything, but her fingers twitched and the corner of her lips quirked up. Keith eased the camera into her hands, holding it by the lens grip. Sometimes, Allura wouldn’t have the energy to close her fingers entirely around things.

“There,” Keith said, settling next to Allura, leaning his chin against her pillow. “Guess what that is?”

Her lips didn’t move, not yet, but her eyes shifted along the photo, looking at the colors. She mouthed something, but he couldn’t hear her. He didn’t prod, though. Allura would find the strength all on her own, she was strong like that.

“Mocking…bird.” She breathed out, and Keith grinned at her.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she? I saw her by a church, near one of the statues. It was an angel, I think. She had wings as tall as trees, and she pointed with a finger towards the sky. It had been a clear morning, and not too many people about, and there she was – sitting on the finger pointing to the sky. Singing.” Keith said, recalling the moment the light cut in through the sky and bathed the mockingbird. She had been surrounded by swallows, itching for her nest, but she continued to sing, on that finger of an angel statue.

Allura’s thumb slowly moved to the button for the next photo, and Keith helped her pin pressing it. It was a great crested flycatcher, with tufts of yellow and grey. They didn’t linger on the ground – settled only for the treetops but Keith had been driving by, down the empty road and he saw one, in between the spaces of tree trunks.

“You were right,” he whispered, noting how close his mouth was to Allura’s ear, “this one was a rascal. Took me forever to get a photo, I had to bribe it with bread crumbs. Bad bird.”

Allura’s lips curled up, and she may have wanted to chuckle, but she wheezed and Keith waited for her to settle, or reach out for the water.

She didn’t need to, laying her head back down. The camera was still in her hands, but she rested against her belly – an indication for Keith to take it away. “We’ll check the rest tomorrow, alright?”

Allura didn’t answer. He didn’t mind, though, powering it down and setting it in his bag again. He turned back to her, meeting her gaze.

“How are you feeling? Okay?” He asked, and Allura blinked once.  _Yes._

Keith smiled, reaching out to feel her forehead. She didn’t have a fever, most donors usually did after a donation. It said a lot about her strength. “What do you want to do? Go back to sleep?”

Two blinks.  _No._

It helped, to have these little signs, when Allura wasn’t feeling up to talking. She moved her gaze to the table on her other side, where a few books rested. Keith stood, walking over and grabbed one –  _Sputnik Sweetheart –_ and showed it to her. “Want me to read this one to you?”

Allura nodded, almost imperceptibly. Keith saw everything, though.

He pulled the chair close, and opened the book, shifting the pages. It was one of the books he got for her, still unread. If this were any other day, he would have walked into the ward to find her with the book in her hands, her hair up in a messy bun the way she loved it, and a half-eaten apple on her lap. This was not any other day, though.

Today was her little victory day, and Keith would be damned if he couldn’t celebrate it the way she wanted it.

“Ready, sweetheart?” He asked, and Allura blinked again. A week ago, she would have reached out and pulled his hair. He had no doubt that she was tallying all this, even in her half-lucid state. Keith can already feel the familiar pain rearing up. Clearing his throat, and skimming the first few sentences quickly, Keith slowly read aloud. “In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions…”

* * *

In the evenings, much later, when Allura gained a semblance of wakefulness, Keith would run to the restroom and prepare her bath. Normally, he’d have a sponge bath for her. She would always insist, and Keith could never deny her anything – especially when she looked at him with those eyes – but it was not good to have her move around today. He settled with readying a new rag, and filled a dipper with water and soap.

Carefully setting it next to her bed, he’d wash the rag and slowly wipe her down. He’d leave the back parts of her body for another time, when she had more strength to turn. Right now, he’d settle with softly cleaning her arms, gripping her wrist in his grasp gently. The ministrations would lull her to sleep, and he’d move the blankets down, exposing her bare legs under the hospital gown.

A week ago, he’d let her clean herself up, especially this part. She was a dignified woman, and she wouldn’t want anyone to clean  _that_ part of her when she could do it herself.

Allura was asleep, though, and it was important to keep her groin area clean. He freshened the rag and gently wiped her down. He didn’t reach up to her abdomen, where the bandage was still fresh. He settled with softly washing her hips, then her thighs.

Donors’ pubic hair was always kept short, so Keith didn’t have any difficulty with wiping that area. He swabbed the inside of her thighs, making sure not to rub the cloth against her clitoris too roughly. He cleaned the rag after he was done, returning to the restroom to dump it down the sink. He prepared a new batch of soap water, for the last part.

When he came back, Allura was still sleeping, her head turned to the door, a hand over her belly, as if unconsciously aware of the wound and protecting it. Keith pulled the gown up, but kept it around her thigh, to hide her vagina from view. Some of the nurses would just burst in, sometimes, without knocking – most often the male nurses. Keith prayed he was never away from her side when that happened.

He brought the rag up and washed the lower thighs, cleaning all the way to the knee, and down under. He made sure all parts of her skin were clean, the natural tan part to the fresh pink portion down by her knee caps where legs should be. After all, Allura’s first donation were both her legs from the knees down.

It wouldn’t do to have them dirty, and she was ever so proud of how neat the operation was.

* * *

Keith walked through the door, just in time to duck as an apple slammed into the wall next to him. He looked up, bewildered, and saw Allura – hands crossed over her chest, hair up in a messy bun, annoyed. “You’re late!”

He raised his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She refused to smile at him, even when he apologized, so Keith ambled up to her, pulling the chair close. “What can I do to make it up to you, princess?”

She glanced at him, her bright blue eyes taking in his hair. Keith swallowed, and – he knew it – groaned as Allura pulled at his hair. “That was for teasing me, and for being late.”

“Okay, okay,” Keith groused. He arranged his hair, and sat up. “Now that you’ve gotten payback, what do you want to do?”

He stood, taking in her clipboard and read through the notes. Her vitals were looking good, and she was recovering well from her last donation – a part of her liver. He didn’t know to whom it went to, and he didn’t care. He used to do that, to find out where his donors’ organs went.

He stopped, especially when he found out that his last donor’s heart went to a rich tycoon who adamantly refused to stop smoking.

“I want to visit the fountain.” She said, voice hopeful as she gripped  _Sputnik Sweetheart_ in her hands tightly. Keith breathed deep, smiling at her in apology.

“You know we can’t do that, Allura. Not yet. It’s too soon for you to move.” He answered, making sure he sounded put-off. He made sure never to sound understanding around her – she hated that. She’d rather he sound irritated than pitiful.

As if expecting it, Allura rolled her eyes and huffed. “Fine, then I wanna talk about this book.”

She moved her knees – her  _stumps_ , she called them – and Keith relented, smiling easily at her. “Alright, what have you read so far?”

“I think I was four chapters in,” she started, thumbing the book. “I feel kinda bad for the guy. He’s obviously in love with Sumire, but she wants somebody else.”

Keith nodded, resting his chin against his palm. “Things like that happen, you know. You don’t get to choose who you fall in love with. You just do.”

She shook her head. “Still, it must be lonely. To love someone who doesn’t love you. How do you think that feels like, Keith?”

He looked at her, then, and the way the wisps of her hair fell around her face, in no definite order, and how the bun wasn’t even tied properly. He looked at the faint line of her eyebrows, her tan skin and how thin it was – as if it was merely a layer draped over a skeleton.

Her eyes, though, shone with intensity. Keith swallowed, because it reminded him – so much – of someone he had forced himself to forget.

No matter how many times he told himself to forget, there were moments – or moments of seconds, and a second of a second – where he would look up, and he would feel like Shiro was there, just behind the corner, and Keith would walk into his arms and he’d reach out to pull him close, longing for that closeness now gone.

“I’m not really sure, Allura.” He answered. “I’ve never been in love, before.”

She cocked her head, curious — a gleam to her eyes he’s never seen before. “You’ve never been in love?”

Keith shook his head. “I guess I haven’t. I’ve never felt what all those books said.”

He’s never felt the riotous passion, the one that breaks through despite the odds. Keith’s never felt the turbulence of a kiss, or the electrifying caress of a touch. He wasn’t sure if it’s because he never had the chance to feel something like that, or if it’s because he wasn’t really like the people in the books he read.

That’s the thing, right? He wasn’t like the people in the books.

People like him, and Allura? They were not like the characters in stories and movies, who go through challenges and odds, and prevails in the end. He wasn’t a person like that, and he wasn’t a person like those outside.

When he walked down the streets and saw parents with their children, saw them crowd around tables in cozy restaurants, watched as they flocked to each other — the hugging, and the kissing, the gentle touches — they weren’t like that.

Keith wasn’t born for that. He was made, like Allura was made.

Maybe if he had been born, and not made, he would be able to answer her.

Love seemed like something that wasn’t for them — they’ve never been taught to love. It was as foreign a concept to them as the outside world had been, when he was still nine and growing up in the sturdy walls of Edo House.

“That’s not fair,” Allura mentioned, looking to the window. The sunlight caught in her eyes, and they seemed to glow. She looked wistfully into the distance, bathed in gold, and he swore he wasn’t the stick-thin cadaver she was in that moment. “I think everyone deserves to know love.”

* * *

“What was that noise?” Allura asked, and Keith looked up, closing the door after him. He had food in a bag in his hand, having ran from the hospital canteen. On the way back to the ward, he had passed a patient’s open room, and there were people crowding inside, wearing colorful hats and bringing balloons with them.

He set the food next to the table, Allura’s empty plate and utensils set neatly. Not even crumbs remained, Keith noted. She’s always made it her mission not to waste any of her food — unless he was late and she threw it at him, of course.

“There was a patient, down there. Had a birthday. They had cake and balloons.” Keith answered, pulling his journal from the bag, opening to tomorrow’s date. She didn’t answer him, turned back to her book as he jotted down notes and things to do the next day. The donor system would usually want a report on his current donor’s status, and when the next possible donation could be carried out.

“I wish I had a birthday.” Allura blurted out, turning a page. Keith’s hand stilled on the journal, the scratching of his pen suddenly silent. She didn’t speak anymore, and all he heard was her finger gliding across the page, quietly whispering the words aloud as she read.

Keith sat back, and watched the evening sky outside the window, and the fading sunlight on the edge of the horizon.

* * *

There was a book that Keith read, once. He can’t really remember when he read it, or why. Maybe it was when he first started being a carer, perhaps the second or the third donor he has handled. Keith would often read, it was one of the things that was easy to do when his entire day was planned around his donor.

He no longer had the time to sit, and paint and draw. The small room in a lodge he’d stay at was cold, and only his bag and the bed lingered there — he couldn’t talk to the walls, after all. He spent most of his days, and nights, at the bedside of his donors. Even though it hurt his back to sleep most days in a chair, or on the small visitor’s bench — being next to them felt better than tossing and turning in a room that felt like a coffin.

So, he read. He read a lot, and one time, he read this book. It was called  _Human Acts_ by Han Kang. It was an account of a violent student uprising, in a country in the far east, where it detailed the death of a young boy and the survivors’ journey of rebuilding their lives. It was a story of a brutalized people, seeking a voice.

There was a part that struck Keith. Han Kang wrote:

_How long do souls linger in their bodies? Do they really flutter away like some bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame?_

The idea of souls had never really attached itself to Keith. After all, it wasn’t something that Edo House openly discussed with her students. No, the school never really focused on those kinds of literature, on the discussion of souls, and love, and what happens to people after they die.

The concepts of death and life eluded him just as quickly as the idea of love felt like smoke in his fingers.

When Allura had said that sentence —  _I wish I had a birthday_ — Keith had stared outside, to the horizon. The dying sunlight, painting a line of scarlet across black, trembled for a moment. Did a soul fly away, then?

Somewhere, out there, did a soul leave its human bonds and flew away, like a bird, gliding on currents and the winds? Do souls dance and surf along the breeze? Where do they go, if they fly away? Do they travel the world, or do they fly higher and higher, reaching past the clouds, and burning up like a star?

* * *

The fountain on the hospital grounds bubbled merrily, and it provided a soothing background to the early summer morning. There were a few birds on the walls of the hospital grounds, a few sparrows resting their wings, bathing in the sunlight. One, or two, would fly to the birdbath beside the fountain, and the water would splash around as they took turns.

Allura loved watching that, and Keith made it a frequent thing to have her in the gardens whenever she could take it. It wasn’t difficult to carry her, after all. A hand on her back and another under her thighs as the absence of her legs made it a bit challenging, but nothing he can’t handle with the help of a wheelchair.

They were in the gardens, Keith sitting on the stone bench beside the fountain. Allura was in the wheelchair, hands crossed primly on her lap, a lilac hospital gown on her. She had her hair down, pale hair in ringlets set against her shoulders and bosoms.

There was a smile on her face, as she turned to watch the birds bathe. Keith raised the camera in his hand, and took a photo.

She turned to him at the click, curiosity gleaming in blue eyes that often looked violet in a certain light. “Did you take a picture of me?”

Keith angled for a response, actually unsure of what made him do that. He had never asked her before, and for some reason, it just felt right. “I’m sorry, I can delete it if you don’t want one.”

Allura took a moment to eye him, gently, and a her lips quirked up, her eyes brightening. “Of course you can, dummy.”

The word snuck up on him, and Keith couldn’t help the way his smile faltered. He looked down, unable to help the frown settling on his features, or the weight slamming into his chest like a truck. Allura’s voice had a tinge of concern as she called him. “Keith?”

The birds continued to trill and chirp, the effervescent rush of the fountain complementing their song. Keith shook his head. “It’s—It’s just...my best friend used to call me that. All the time.”

Interest shone in her eyes when Keith looked up. “You never told me you had a best friend.”

Keith raised a hand to scratch at his hair, turning away. “I... _had_ a best friend, but I guess, well, things change. Can’t really go back to what you can’t have anymore.”

Allura was quiet, and Keith breathed deep as always, in every memory of Shiro. A part of him wondered where he was now, what he was doing. The last memory he had of Shiro was chasing after Adam, who had disappeared the night before, off to become a donor after the disastrous meeting with his Possible.

Maybe he’s still out there, searching. Or, maybe he has started donating already.

He looked at Allura, and imagined Shiro in her place. He imagined his best friend — strong, beautiful and dazzling — in a wheelchair, lacking his legs. He tried to imagine Shiro’s strong jaw, or the curl of hair down his chin — imagined tan skin turned gaunt and thin, stretched over bone. He tried to imagine those sharp taupe eyes grow dull, tired and his hair limp against his skin.

A part of Keith can’t — too blinded by the way Shiro hurtled in his childhood. Another part ached to imagine him like that, and the weight on his chest grew a thousandfold heavy.

“Well,” Allura spoke, but Keith kept his gaze on the water. “Sometimes, just because you thought something is gone, doesn’t make it true. Sometimes...some things linger.”

Like souls in bodies, fluttering like birds, trembling edges of candle flames.

But people like them didn’t have souls. They had no spirit inhabiting their bodies, desperate to fly away. They were made, not born. Souls weren’t made — they just were. Keith didn’t have one, and Allura didn’t have one and Shiro...didn’t have one.

They didn’t linger. They were made, they served and they disappeared.

* * *

There was a time, when Keith started to be a carer, that the reality of what was happening had carefully upset the walls and the barricades he had placed, slithered in through the back and stabbed him in the belly. It was during his last donor, before Allura.

Not all schools followed the same donor system, and Keith — in retrospect — realized how lucky he was that he ended at Edo House. Perhaps not for the life that was given to him, but the years he had to build himself, his relationship with Shiro and the memories that stood by him.

His donor, the third one he’s ever had, was a young boy named Ryou. For some reason, he reminded him so much of Shiro — perhaps it was because of the dark hair, or the hazel eyes that seemed to look more and more like taupe as each day passed by. Ryou was only sixteen, but he had come from a school that allowed donations from younger donors.

Keith had been his first carer, when he had already gone through two donations. Ryou had spent the first two donations by himself, locked in ICU wards and handled by the hospital nurses. He had already given a part of his intestine, and his spine and he couldn’t move much.

In fact, he didn’t move a lot. When Keith first saw him, only his eyes shifted and Keith had to pause, take in the catheter line, and the constantly half-agape mouth. It was then that Keith learned to use an E-trans board — a color board, he would call it, because Ryou’s eyes would crinkle, the only way he could smile, when Keith said that.

There was an unspoken rule in medical practice, telling doctors and nurses not to get attached to patients. It warned that getting attached would mean objectivity would be affected. You couldn’t think straight and what needed to be done if your heart was in the way, it meant. Keith never really thought it applied to him — he wasn’t a medical practitioner, after all.

He got attached. He got attached to the boy’s bright crinkles, and he got attached to using the color board when talking to him and he enjoyed watching the glimmer in Ryou’s eyes.

When Ryou had completed, his heart now in the chest of a rich businessman who refused to stop smoking, Keith had failed to check in with the system. He had been outside, walking listlessly down streets without really taking them in.

His eyes stung, and his chest felt like it would explode, but he didn’t break. He just kept walking, and walking and maybe — maybe — a part of him did that for the boy who could never walk, for Ryou who could only turn his eyes with every movement of the light, who only laid still as his catheter shifted with his piss, who only grinned with his eyelids every time Keith pulled out the board.

He found himself in a bookstore — a run-down walk-up that was about the size of a cubicle. The owner, an old man who looked up at him through thick glasses, only nodded as Keith stood and gazed at the items he had on sale. An old pamphlet stood out to him, and Keith had rummaged for change without really looking.

He had stood there, in the cold night, his breath turning into frost as he read the words off the pamphlet in the stand’s pathetic light.

_When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time._

* * *

Keith didn’t know why that one word stuck with him all these years — love. Allura wasn’t the first person to mention that to him. No, he had read it before — in books and Shiro’s comic books _._ He had heard it in songs, and saw it in movies. He knew what the word meant, but he never really understood.

That all-consuming desire, that suffocating wave of passion — the innate need to sacrifice everything for it. Keith never knew what to make out of a word that he never felt before. Some days, when he couldn’t help but remember, he may think of the word and Shiro.

But Keith never felt that all-consuming desire, or a passion that threatened to drown him. Keith’s never felt like he had to sacrifice, and if it weren’t for the circumstances, Keith would still have Shiro. It was different.

He was different.

Many have said that love came from the heart, that this emotion that continued to burn in a person’s chest, that enslaved others and charmed them with its mysticism — it all came from that small organ beating in between the lungs of a person.

When children talk of love, they conjured the image of a heart — not necessarily an anatomical replica, but the point stood. The idea stood. When people talked about feeling heartbroken, they raised a hand to their chests, to where the beating organ rested.

Did love really come from the heart?

Keith raised a hand to his chest, the other holding the camera. He felt his heartbeat, felt the constant beat that kept blood pumping throughout his entire body.

If love came from the heart, then why did he not feel it? He had one, everyone had one. Without one, it would usually be impossible for one to live.

The tour guide’s heels clattered against the tiled floor. A line of little kids followed her, and their parents and guardians kept to the sides, watching over their wards. Keith stood by the column, partially hidden as he continued to take pictures of the animals on display in the museum.

A child gasped, pointing to the whale hanging from the ceiling. It was big — covered the entire expanse of the area, and everyone who entered this particular section could not help but look up, at the gigantic creature twisting as if about to burst from the surface.

Keith raised his camera and took a photo.

The tour guide started talking to the children. The blue whale is the largest animal in the world, she said. One little girl raised her hand, and asked if they were scary. The tour guide laughed, a merry tone that eased the smile on the child’s face.  _No, the blue whale isn’t scary at all. For a big guy, he’s very sweet._

 _But he’s so big!_ The girl said again, and Keith looked up at the replica, the tail reaching to the upper portions of the museum, while its head lingered down the ground floor.

 _A big guy has a big heart, and Mr. Whale has the biggest heart there is!_ The tour guide responded, and a chorus of ‘ooh’ sounds echoed from the children.

Keith looked up at the whale, and wondered — the heart beneath its skin, as big as a car. He knew the mathematics in his head, could read off the nearest plaque for it, but it wasn’t the weight or the accuracy that mattered.

Blue whales have hearts the size of a Volkswagen. Keith only had a heart the size of his fist.

Had he a bigger heart, would he have been able to love more? If his heart weren’t so small, lodged in between his lungs and his ribs, if his heart grew to the size of his body, would he have known love better?

Had he been able to show that, to know what love was and  _love_ , would Shiro have stayed?

Had his heart beat louder and larger, had he known how to make it all the more visible, would he have been less a donor, less a carer? Would he have been a person?

Would he be different?

Would he be worth loving?

Would Shiro have seen him, and stayed?

* * *

“You should find him.” Allura said, and Keith looked up at her. He didn’t have to ask who she meant, when the answer was clear in her eyes. It was the only thing she would talk about, some days, and Keith had to bite his tongue hard enough not to react to her words. “This best friend. You should find him.”

“I don’t,” Keith started. “I don’t know, Allura.”

“Why,” She asked. “Why don’t you know? I’m sure he misses you terribly. You’re best friends, after all.”

Keith shook his head, unable to understand her naivete. Just because they were best friends didn’t mean that things didn’t change, and it certainly didn’t mean it was easy to go back to how things were. Some things were water under the bridge, and others destroyed the bridge altogether. “We  _were_ best friends, Allura. Not the same anymore.”

A poke to his head and Keith reared back, surprised. Allura smiled at him. “He’s your best friend, dummy. You just don’t stop being best friends, not unless you let it. Not unless you let go.”

Keith mulled her words over, quietly contemplating. Maybe they did let go of each other, Keith thought. A year ago, in that cottage in the forest, in the Colony, maybe they had all decided to let each other go. Maybe, when they had said those words, shouted them into the ocean and heard it all coming back, maybe it was when they decided not to hold on anymore.

Maybe it was not about losing. Maybe Keith just gave up.

“What do you say?” Keith asked, and she turned her head to him. “What do you say when you made a mistake and you want to fix it?”

Allura reached out to him, placing a hand over his. “You say ‘I’m sorry’ and he says ‘I forgive you’.”

Maybe that’s what everything needed, after all. Just ‘I’m sorry’ and an ‘I forgive you’.

Enough with the why me, and the self-blame. Perhaps it was about what’s next, and what to do after. To go where he was supposed to be.

* * *

It was quiet in the ward. The lights were low, and there were no stars outside. Keith was still in his chair, his hands gripping the end of his seat tightly. Allura was up in her bed, her hair down, eyeing the book in her hand. “We finished it, at least.”

She said, voice holding a faint line of cheer. Keith bit his lip, and it hurt — enough to bleed.

Keith held his tongue in, and he focused on the line of his boots. He didn’t look anywhere else, only kept his mind on gripping the seat tight enough to budge, but not enough to break and he counted the breaths in his head, and in his lungs and if he did that, if he focused on that, he wouldn’t need to think of anything else.

A hand fell on his shoulder, warm and gentle. Allura’s voice was kind. “Promise me you’ll find him.”

A photo of a blue whale was on her lap, in the midst of the folds of her blanket. Behind it, in his own terrible handwriting, were a few lines in blue gel ink.

_Let’s go here on your birthday! I know you don’t have one, so I made one for you! -Keith_

Keith’s vision trembled, and the boots and the floor tiles broke and coalesced into miasma where he couldn’t tell what began and what ended. The hand on his shoulder never moved away, and when Allura’s fingers threaded through his hair, softly — gently — he couldn’t stifle the hitched breath.

“Promise me you’ll find him.” She repeated, a little firmly and Keith looked up, his back bent as his elbows rested on his knees, and her blue-violet eyes glistened like moonlit oceans, and she looked ethereal in that moment. “Promise me.”

Keith willed the burn in his eyes back as he mouthed words that came without sound. “I don’t know how to do this without you.”

Her smile fluctuated in his muddled gaze, but he saw her lean close. Her voice dropped low as her thumb wiped the wetness of his cheek. “I learned a secret. There is no without. I am not gone.”

Her other hand rested on his cheek, joining its twin. Delicate fingers pushed the hair away from his eyes. “I am scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life...like new snow.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith whispered, unsure of what he was apologizing for. Somehow, it felt right. It sounded right. Not a lot of things had gone right, apologizing felt right. He knew she hated that — hated it when he apologized for something that wasn’t his fault.

When the nurse that came to replace her IV was a bit rough, or when the aide who placed the food didn’t listen to her when she talked. When the people around them were content to turn their heads up and ignore what they saw, when Keith and Allura made this little world of their own, a world where they mattered — because in the outside world, they didn’t.

The people were content to lie in bed and abuse their bodies, and have doctors cut them open and their organs replaced. They would get new hearts, and new legs and new kidneys and they didn’t ask where they came from, and why they were given new ones — so that they can just abuse it over and over.

Somehow, apologizing felt right. “I’m sorry.”

Allura made a shushing sound, holding his cheek. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. I need you to know that.”

Keith sucked in a breath as she wiped his other cheek, the wetness trailing. “Forgiveness is warm, like a tear on a cheek. Think of that, and think of me when you stand in the rain.”

She gave him her brightest smile, and it was like looking into the sun — and Keith blinked, seeing it in its entirety. It was impossible how his eyes didn’t fail him then.

“I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is rain.”

* * *

Allura completed that night. Her two legs, a part of her liver and both her kidneys.

Keith sat outside, the bench underneath him as cold as ice. The doctor’s receding footsteps echoed in his ears, an organ container in his hand and he stood — numb. He walked to the operating room doors and looked through the glass and the chain. The drapes were pulled away, and there was no one in the room.

Allura was on the table, her hair in a cap. There was an oxygen mask still attached to her face, and a wrap over her torso. The lower part was left exposed, and Keith can see — even from this distance — the number of instruments left inside her pelvis. She was cut open, exposed for unfeeling eyes to see and they left her there like that.

How can something be a memory when you can never forget?

He saw none of her intensity, her love and her kindness, then. All he saw was an empty husk, wearing the face of someone who loved him.

The overhead lights trembled, and Keith blinked.

_How long do souls linger in their bodies? Do they flutter away like some bird? Is that what trembled the edges of the candle flame?_

But they were clones, and they didn’t have souls. There were no candle flames, only overhead lights — and those didn’t tremble.

The photo of Allura, in the garden, burned a hole into his chest, hot as it was inside his front pocket. Keith turned, and walked away.

* * *

How do you search for something you’ve let go?

How do you find something that, once gone, can never be retrieved?

How do you find the past? The past was weird, it happened now, and it happened then, and how do you search for something  _then_ in the  _now?_ It felt like it existed, and if it did, where did it go?

Yet if it did exist, and it doesn’t now, then where does it go?

Keith knew the questions in head were confusing, and he knew some of them were made just to throw obstacles in his quest to live up to his promise. The thing was — just because it was confusing didn’t mean it didn’t make sense. Hadn’t Allura tried to make him remember that? Just because you thought you lost something, doesn’t make it true.

But the world was not a book, and lines that were made to sound thoughtful could only help so much. Keith knew, as a carer, the system would close their doors in his face if he asked for help. He knew that the moment he signed up to be one. Still, that didn’t mean he was out of options.

The road going back to the Colony hadn’t changed in the year that he had been gone. His car — an old grey sedan the system had given him permission to use — shifted occasionally as he drove through footpaths and past trees that grew more and more familiar as he got closer.

Keith didn’t know what to expect when he reached the cottage, only that he had to start somewhere. It was the last place he had last seen Shiro, when he had grabbed what things he could and packed it all in that same burlap duffle bag and turned his back on his best friend.

It was when they started letting go of each other.

A part of him tried to warn him — that there was nothing to be found, digging up dregs of the past. What use was there, pretending that wishing for things that have happened already to what? Turn back time? Reverse things? Find a way to go back to what had broke, and fixed it before it even splintered?

Or maybe, another part thought, it was just about confrontation. Maybe what Keith needed was to see it — really see it for what it was — before he could nod his head, swallow and look towards what’s next. Maybe he needed somewhere to start, and you can’t start where you haven’t even been to.

Keith may be eighteen now, but he was still stuck in that time, a year ago, and he hadn’t moved since. Maybe it was about facing that, and moving on.

* * *

A year can do a lot of things — it can change someone, not necessarily for the better, and it can weather even stone. It can break someone into so many tiny pieces, they scatter into the wind like snow. It can haunt a body so powerfully, so completely, that it moved on its own in search of a time before it ever began.

The cottage was in ruins, Keith found. The walls were damp, mold growing on the wood. There were no lights, and the windows were broken in. Grass and shrubs grew tall, and some even managed to climb up the little balcony and into the living room.

Keith didn’t enter — he stood outside, by the car, and just gazed in. The place was ransacked, no trace of any of the items — like Ulaz’s rocking chair, or the old blue welcome mat. No posters littered the walls, and no shadows moved inside. It was empty, and morose — like the remains of an animal after it had been slaughtered and left to weakly cry out, seeking an end to a lengthy, drawn-out death.

Keith needed to see it — the cottage. He needed to see it, like this. Broken and dilapidated, uninhabitable and wrecked beyond saving. He imagined the landowners would want to run it down, destroy it completely. Maybe clear the forest, even.

He didn’t really mind. He didn’t care what happened to it, just that he needed to see it like that.

Keith turned back to the car, and opened the trunk. He ignored the mud caking his boots as he walked back, pushing away bags, and books, and grabbed the gasoline containers he bought for emergencies. There was a lighter, in the front compartment, beneath the rag and he got that out, too.

It wouldn’t do much, but it was enough for Keith. This cottage had given him enough pain, and has haunted him too much.

He opened the first container, and walked up the old steps, lightly dousing them in gasoline. He stepped inside the living room, ignoring the thick smell of earth and decay, and he spilled more gasoline on where the couch used to be, and the table holding the television up. There was that bench where Adam loved to sit with Shiro, tangling their fingers together.

Keith doused that, too.

He didn’t climb up the steps — it didn’t even look sturdy enough to accommodate his weight anymore — but made sure to pour some gasoline there, too. The walls were wooden, it would catch easily.

The kitchen was next, and only the table remained. The chairs had gone, the refrigerator had mildew and weed growing in it and the white sink was now a dark brown color. To the side was Ulaz and Thace’s bedroom and only an empty cabinet and the wooden bed frame remained.

Light struggled to enter through the glass, covered in mold, but he didn’t care at how dark it was inside. He was alone inside, dumping gasoline everywhere until his nostrils hurt with the smell of it.

Or maybe he wasn’t, and maybe the shadows that creeped in the corners where the ghosts of all those memories that fogged and haunted him. Maybe it was the specters of who Keith used to be — looking from the outside in at Ulaz and Thace, and Adam and Shiro.

Maybe his ghost was soundlessly screaming at him.  _Stop!_ It would say.  _Don’t take this from me!_

But Keith’s lost more than what he had gotten, and if this was what waited beyond the horizon, this dump that contained all the things he’s lost, like garbage among the grass, then maybe it, too, needed to go.

* * *

“You can be at peace now.” He whispered, standing outside. Three gasoline containers, now empty, laid at his feet. The lighter in his hand was cold, but Keith didn’t mind. “No more dreams.”

Keith didn’t know who he was talking to — or what he was referring to, in the first place. It didn’t matter, not really.

He knelt, and pressed the open flame to the first step up the cottage.

* * *

He lost track of time as he stood there, watching the cottage engulfed in flames. He watched it all until the cinders hurt his eyes, but even then, he didn’t look away. The roaring flames crept up the shingles and the columns, and the ceiling fell in, and a creaking noise rang through the quiet of the forest. A dying knell.

The scarlet flames reached high, and the nearby trees glowed amber, and the fire trembled.

Keith looked up at the sky, and wondered — how far would his memories’ ghost reach before being swept away by the northern winds?

* * *

The message was simple, and it only gave him a name and an address. Keith didn’t really need more than that.

The hospital was in another city, a few hundred miles from where he was at — and the drive had been long and lonely. The radio stuttered out and failed, and Keith was left with rolling his window down and listening to the wind breezing in through the leaves. He’d stop at one of the few diners that dot the way, in between the fields that reminded him of savannahs, the empty northern hemisphere bearing on him.

He’d get a cup of coffee in a ceramic mug, and a plate of eggs and bacon, taken in the last couch by the wall. The ceiling fan’s motor would be barely perceptible, and Keith would think how often his days revolved around this one scene.

Keith wouldn’t say anything, he never did, and when the time came for him to leave, he would. He always did.

* * *

The ward was quiet, and Keith only saw the shadow of the patient against the curtains. He looked to the nurse, who nodded at him before walking off and he closed the door after himself. Keith placed the phone back in his bag, and he stepped forward, his shoots clicking on the ground.

He doesn’t really know what to say. He knew what to ask, what he was here for, but somehow — to get to the point — to take that answer and leave, it somehow felt like oil in his mouth. Maybe this was why carers were not supposed to handle donors they know, because of this awkwardness?

Keith didn’t really know, because he felt he and Shiro would have gone through without that.

He stepped into the donor’s vision. His hair had been shorn off, and Keith saw the sewn incision against his skull, relatively healed. Hair was starting to grow back, but it was slow and Keith looked down to see a bandage around his belly — distinct against his tan skin exposed by the unbuttoned hospital gown.

“Yes?” Thace asked. “Are you my carer?”

Keith didn’t answer him, not just yet. He took in the hazel eyes and the dark brows, the set lines against his lips. He saw no recognition in them.

He looked at the incision against Thace’s skull and swallowed.

“I’m Keith.” He introduced himself, and he tried his best to make his voice sound stable, sound normal. “Do you remember me?”

Thace frowned at him, the Rubik’s cube in his hand gone ignored. “You look familiar. A bit. I don’t know.”

“Oh.” The word came to his lips immediately. “Oh.”

He sat with Thace, and he prodded and asked. He spent how many hours there, looking into blank hazel eyes and hearing a chorus of ‘I don’t know, maybe, kinda familiar’ and Keith felt his thumb nail press into his palm so hard, it left an ident.

When evening fell, Keith left — no answers in his grasp, and an amnesiac donor staring apathetically at his back.

* * *

There was a message on his phone, but Keith ignored that. He was outside, somewhere, by a small stand where an old man was selling newspapers. It was a small stand, the size of a restroom cubicle, and he stood in the shade under the awning. The rain continued to pelt down, and he watched it crash into puddles on the asphalt ground. People passed by him, in raincoats and bringing umbrellas. They talked to each other as they looked ahead, and he heard their laughter — about their families and their dates — and Keith watched them all.

How would it feel, if he had a son? If he had a child to call his own and raise? Would today be his son’s birthday? Would he run to Keith the moment he got home, little feet padding on the ground and terribly delicate hands reaching out, and would his son say ‘Papa’ or ‘Daddy’ or ‘Dada’? How would he feel in Keith’s arms, if Keith raised him up to the heavens like an offering, or if he pretended to throw him in the air and his son would giggle and laugh so loud, the sound of it would imprint itself into Keith’s memory like paint?

When he saw the smile on a mother’s face as she handed the ice cream from the vendor to her daughter, and saw her daughter stand on her toes to drop a kiss on her mother’s cheek — he wondered what real people felt when they saw that.

Keith doesn’t know what to make of the burning weight in his chest, or the incredible cold up his skin. It wasn’t even too terribly cold out — but it felt like he was made of ice all over.

The wind whipped and droplets of rain fell across his face and he blinked, feeling warmth all of a sudden. Keith looked up at the downpour, and wondered.

The phone in his hand vibrated again, and Keith sighed, taking it out.

He read the message, and the fingers around the small device tightened so hard, it was a wonder it didn’t crack.

He had no umbrella, but he ran through the rain. After all, hadn’t Allura mentioned she was always with him, in every moment the rain scattered like new snow?

* * *

Keith had always believed time was like an arrow, or a line of dominoes. He always thought it was as an orderly push, from the beginning running down all the way to the end. The past had happened, the present was happening and the future was still to happen. A to B to C.

Sure, a physicist with motor neuron disease would argue that it was the ever expanding way of the universe, that we didn’t really see the shattered remains of a mug contract until it was whole, because time kept leaping forward into a more disorderly future.

Keith didn’t have arguments of time in his head, but with the message in his hand, he doesn’t feel like he was leaping towards the future. It was like the past was catching up, the present waited and the future refused to move until they both got here.

Funny, Keith has never felt like he’s been given a lot of chances, opportunities for him to correct what he’d done wrong, but if this were one more chance, in a long line of finite chances and little victories, he’d settle for less.

Somehow, the thought of walking into the room — because it was not a ward, but a room — was terrifying. The idea of bursting through the double doors, the wood dark with age, and find himself caught in the gaze of taupe eyes he hadn’t seen in a year, the thought of it was enough to turn his legs to stone.

If Keith would let himself, he’d stand still outside. He wouldn’t take that step through, and he’d stand and pace but never enter. He’d bite his nails until they were disgusting, and he’d run to the restroom and splash water against his face, and he’d do it all over again. He’d sit at the bench outside, knee jumping fast, and he’d look at the other visitors and patients passing by.

But he wouldn’t, because running up the number of rooms, something Allura once said thundered through his head.

 _Life is fleeting!_ She had once said, reading aloud a line in a book he had given her.  _Don’t waste a single moment of your precious life! Wake up now! And now! And now!_

Keith swallowed, and pushed the door open with hand. Shiro raised his head, and Keith looked into his eyes.

The wood under his fingers slipped, and it swung silently behind him as he pressed the other to his mouth, as if stifling a sob that never formed.

* * *

Shiro still looked the same, if that were possible at all. His shoulders were still as broad as ever, and the same tan skin that Keith remembered without error. The same two moles, small and almost imperceptible, by the seam where shoulder meets neck, and Keith knew the places of so many others. He knew the faded dusky nipples and the single strand of hair that grew on them, and he knew the faint silver lines around his armpits, as if his body hadn’t expected him to grow in bulk at all.

His hands were still the same — always resting on their backs, palms up and thumbs twitching against the index fingers. Keith knew the little, tiny scar against his wrist where he had hurt himself on the old tyre swing in Edo House and Mr. Holt almost had a fit when he saw it. Keith knew the rush of hair down Shiro’s legs, and the knees that were a little darker than the rest of his skin.

His hair fell against his shoulder, in that same, almost rebellious manner. Keith ached to reach out, to weave his fingers through like he once did, so long ago — and he remembered the way Shiro would lean into it, albeit unconsciously as he continued to talk about  _Star Wars._

Keith still had a hand pressed against his mouth, and he couldn’t say anything as he took a step closer, and closer. Shiro didn’t move, merely cocked his head to the side, waiting.

Keith’s other hand fell on the top of the chair beside the bed, and it creaked under his weight. It was the only thing helping him keep himself up, and it was the only thing he could feel — cold as it was, it was the only thing that dispelled, no matter how slowly, the freefall inside his body, like someone had pulled the rug from under him.

“Yes?” Shiro asked, following the sound and turning to Keith. “Can I help you?”

Keith shook his head, and his hand was still pressed against his mouth, and he bit the skin of his palm until the great, black empty nothing inside him disappeared.

Is that what they were all destined for? The great, black empty nothing?

Is that what waited for them — for all of them? Just this big, dark, empty hole — like the hole inside of him? Is that why he couldn’t feel? Is that why he couldn’t feel love, or a crush? Is that why he tried to mourn for Allura and he couldn’t feel anything?

No matter how many times he tried to fill it up, he just felt alone and cold and nothing and he wondered if that’s what Allura felt, just this ocean of nothing, floating like he was made of nothing and he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t feel, and it was just darkness and numb and alone and nothing. Is this what waited for them, at the end?

Keith couldn’t help the hitch in his voice, even when his eyes refused to shed tears, and he couldn’t help but reach out, with a trembling hand —

He grasped Shiro’s tightly — like a lifeline — because he can’t  _feel_ anything, he can’t feel anything aside from this big, great empty hole that had somehow lodged itself there with no hope of removal. Somehow, it’s been there all this time, and Keith just didn’t know it, or maybe he did — maybe he’s always known, the way he’s been told but not made to understand, and maybe he was just content to let it be.

But Shiro’s hand tightened around his, and Keith sucked in a sob like the first breath of air in an ocean that continued to pull him down, and Shiro looked no less confused, but it was enough. The hand in his was enough, even if Keith knew that, one day, it will be violently ripped away from him.

“It’s me,” Keith spoke, whispered — voice teetering between hope and despair. “It’s Keith. Han Keith, remember?”

_Remember?_

Shiro’s lips twitched, and he mouthed the name, and his brows furrowed, and his mouth formed this ugly, pathetic sob and his entire form trembled. The hand gripping his was a vice grip, and Keith welcomed the pain it brought because it was a respite, a glorious respite from the nothing in him.

Shiro’s breath was raw, and rough, and the monitor next to them beeped, but Keith ignored it as he raised a hand to Shiro’s cheek, and his best friend didn’t hesitate, pressing another against his. He shook and trembled, like a leaf in the wind of a maelstrom, and Keith tried to hold on to him, tried to made sure the pieces stayed put.

His best friend turned to him, and his cheeks were dry, but his nose dripped with his tears. He couldn’t help it, Keith knew, no matter how much Shiro rocked and his lips stuttered.

He doesn’t understand the words that tumble out Shiro’s lips, or maybe he wasn’t meant to understand. Maybe they weren’t words at all, but just gibberish that came automatically, when you can’t really think of what to say when flooded with an emotion so powerful, it rent you to your knees.

“I’m here.” Keith assured him, even when his voice was no less fragile. “I’m here. I’m sorry.”

Shiro shook his head, and didn’t answer. He pressed his trembling lips against Keith’s open hand, and — in some way — that felt like forgiveness enough. They were best friends, after all. He never really had to think hard to know what Shiro thought, and maybe he was thinking the same thing — that they’ve let go of each other for too long.

He wiped the tears from Shiro’s nose, and placed both hands gently against his cheeks. He was still beautiful, Keith admitted — no, admitting meant that it was beyond his willingness. He didn’t admit, he spoke and he described.

Shiro was still that dazzling star that ran across his childhood, like the millions of stars across the expanse of the sky on cool summer nights. Keith smiled at him, and even though only the pink flesh of his eye sockets and the loose eyelids remained, it was like Shiro can still see him — because he smiled back, and Keith felt like he was nine again, in an assembly hall, and he turned to find Shiro laughing, and Shiro would turn to him—

And he’d smile that tight-lipped smile, just for him.

* * *

Shiro broke in his arms, his nose pressed against the seam where neck meets shoulder, and Keith held him close — tenderly, because it has been forever since he had last seen Shiro, and the idea, the fact that it was just one chance after the other, in a long line of chances and little victories — it was enough.

Keith felt the hole in him tremble, but nothing else. Shiro continued to sob into his shoulder, and maybe — looking back — it was Shiro crying for the both of them, for Keith who couldn’t feel, and Shiro who may have felt too much.

It was enough. It was enough.

* * *

“Why do you call it ‘little victory’?” Keith asked, once. It was the day before Allura’s donation, and she had recounted the first time she had donated — her two legs. The went to a girl, half her age, who lost hers in a car accident.

But Allura was a clone, bio-engineered from a template in a house like Edo somewhere in the north. The little girl was the daughter of a small country’s president. Sometimes, the differences were too stark to bridge the gap.

She had shrugged, cocking her head at him, smiling that one smile of hers — Keith now realized it glimmered with wisdom, like some knowledge she held secret, and that made her more powerful than the rest of the world because she know something they didn’t. “It is a victory, no matter how little. I wake up, and I see you and that’s a victory. I can pull a book and read a few chapters and that is a victory. I close my eyes, and the surgeon places the oxygen mask on my face and cuts me open, and I may slip a few times during the ride, I still wake up and I see you there, outside, waving from the glass. That’s my victory.”

She had called all these little moments — seemingly infinitesimal and irrelevant in the long run — as victories, as chances for her to be happy, for her to look back and think ‘I made it through that’. Keith did not know how to react then, only reaching out to hold her hand.

She squeezed it tightly. “When you bring me the photos of the places and the things I will never be able to see, even that is a victory. Because I can remember, and I can look back and I cannot say I did not know that. I can look back, and know that, in some small way, I did know that, I did see that and I was there. Thank you for giving me these victories, my handsome champion.”

Shiro was in his arms, and Keith looked back on a hundred million moments, of a hundred million seconds, all compressed into minutes and stacked into hours, and those seventeen years of his life where he had spent almost every waking moment with his best friend.

Seventeen long years of victories didn’t seem so bad, he thought. Compared to everything else, it was enough.

* * *

Shiro turned his head to gaze at him, and Keith looked up the moment he did. He just knew, in some small way, he just knew. Like he always had — you can’t take what he’s learned for so long and erase it like it was nothing. Knowing Shiro was like knowing himself, and he can’t unknow himself, he can’t unlearn himself and he can’t take everything he knew that made him who he was and pretend it wasn’t.

A hand raised, and Keith didn’t move, letting Shiro’s fingers run gently against his hair, and down his cheek. Shiro didn’t say anything, simply continued to graze his hand slowly, carefully, like he was holding something fragile and terribly breakable. Keith didn’t make a sound, heart in his throat as those fingers continued to trace over the slope of his nose, and the lids of his eyes and the fine, almost too thin scattering of hair above the line of his lips.

Shiro’s thumb pressed into his chin, not painfully, but firmly. It felt like Shiro wanted to touch every part of him, wanted to memorize each crevice and nook, every dip and rise, and Keith let him — they were relearning each other, seeing the changes and what stayed the same and he knew that no matter how many years passed by — be they in single digits or even less — Keith will never not know Shiro.

Keith made no sound, but took in everything he saw in Shiro, and tried to form the image in his head from the memories he has hidden and the person he saw now. The pale bandages beneath the hospital gown embedded itself into the Shiro in his mind, and the taupe eyes that he’s known for seventeen years gleamed intensely in the eighteen year old man he saw before him.

Things have changed, and things will continue to change. Keith knew — that he was going to keep on changing, and maybe he didn’t really understand what that meant for him.

Those worries continued to linger, and this big great empty hole continued to burn in him, but those were the furthest things from his mind, right now. The seconds continue to tick, and the sands of the hourglass continue to fall. Keith can’t make gravity fall in reverse, and he can’t make physics dance and change time for what it was — but he’d take this moment, no matter how short and transient, and know he’d never forget.

“What did we do?” Shiro asked after, and minutes, hours and maybe centuries have passed before Keith answered because it’s not a question about the now, or the future. It was about that one day, that last day of seventeen.

“We let each other go.” Keith answered, and he gripped Shiro’s hands tightly. “We let each other go.”

Shiro ducked his head, and the tension in his shoulders eased and he pressed his cheek against Keith’s fist. “I’m sorry.”

Keith shook his head, and leaned close, and pressed a kiss against Shiro’s temple.

“I forgive you.”

* * *

The bitterness that Keith expected to feel, after reuniting with Shiro, didn’t come. For the first time in a really long time, he didn’t feel like he was running in the dark, chasing after the rain and lighting his own path. He didn’t feel the specter of Ryou’s crinkled eye-smile, or the wind thumping in his ears the way it did the day Mr. Holt had broken down before him.

Morning sunlight cut in through the windows, and Shiro looked infinitely better without the artificial hospital lights bathing him in white fluorescent. Shiro smiled a lot, that tight-lipped smile that was only for Keith, and Keith smiled back.

It didn’t matter that Shiro couldn’t see him. Little victories, in a short line of little victories. Keith learned to appreciate them for what they were.

“Do you remember,” Shiro started, and Keith turned to him, choosing to sit on the bed next to him instead of the chair. Keith brought the plate of cut fruit to his lap, and skewered a slice of mango. Shiro opened his mouth, biting the mango off the fork. “Do you remember when Ms. Ina had us perform that play, once, when we were fourteen? I can’t remember the title, but there was a guy and a monster with wings and the guy sold his soul to the monster?”

Keith set the fork against the plate, the steel tinkling. “ _Faust?_ The one by Goethe?”

Shiro nodded. “I guess that’s what it was. Yeah, I think so.”

“What about it?” He hummed, after asking if Shiro wanted another slice. He nodded, and Keith raised another slice. He watched Shiro shrug.

“Do you remember what your part was? I think I was a background character, and I had to do this ‘ungah’ sound or something. I can’t really remember why, but I think I did it so that everyone would know that the monster was in disguise in the scene.”

Keith nodded along, unsure of what Shiro was aiming for, who continued reminiscing. “You played the main character, right? The Faust guy?”

Keith stilled, having forgotten that part of his life. Now that Shiro brought it up, he could remember it — clearly and without error. Though the words he had spoken in the play made no sense to him, he remembered Ms. Ina sitting at the front, her hand gesturing as she also mouthed the same words, as if willing Keith to remember them.

He never really auditioned for that part. No, Ms. Ina had this habit of rotating the main characters for each play she wanted them to do, and Keith’s had to lead once or twice. It was just luck that he got to play Faust — and though the play was a watered down, shortened version of a drawn-out anecdote, it was still a challenge.

He remembered the gist of the play — and he remembered pretending to sell his soul to the devil. It was an unusual thing for Shiro to bring up. He didn’t hate Ms. Ina’s classes, but he enjoyed watching them better than performing them. “What about that play, Shiro?”

Shiro shrugged. “Nothing really. I guess I remembered watching you then, saying all those lines, and those were really long lines with big words, and you never missed one or made a mistake. I remembered watching you and thinking ‘there goes Keith, my best friend, being amazing like usual’.”

Keith felt warmth pool in his cheeks at the words. Shiro had never said them, not even after the play when Keith had quietly asked him how he went. Shiro only said one word, then. Great.

“You’re just making fun of me.” He groused, but Shiro shook his head. “Not even once, Keith. i remembered how only Ms. Ina watched at the start, but somehow, Mr. Griffin came and so did Mr. Holt and Mr. K. I don’t know if I got this right, but I’m pretty sure even Mrs. H was in the crowd.”

Keith raised a brow. “Mrs. H? Mrs. Haggar? She was there?”

Shiro made a non-committal sound. “I wasn’t sure, but I guess she was. I mean, we worked on that play for half the year, we almost forgot to make our potluck.”

“Well, considering how we all pitched in, that was pretty much a potluck creation, too.” Keith answered, remembering how everyone helped with the props and the lines, and how many times Adam had set him aside so Keith can memorize his lines.

Those days were long behind them, Keith knew. He didn’t think about formally written lines translated from a language he wasn’t familiar with, and he didn’t think about blocking, and that he should never turn his back on the audience because that was rude to the people watching the play. His days were no longer muddled with Mephistopheles’ bargains, or his plight in Heaven, or the transition of his soul.

Or, perhaps he did — and instead of Mephistopheles, he called it ‘carer’, and maybe instead of heaven, he called it Edo and instead of Faust, he used his name.

It seemed that things do often return, growing in smaller and smaller circles. Maybe that was fine, too.

* * *

“When do you plan to start donating?” Shiro asked. He loved to ask and his questions were many. Keith didn’t blame him, Keith had a lot of questions, too, but they weren’t about Shiro’s donations. He wanted to ask about the future, or the answers to the questions that never stopped haunting him. He wanted to ask about them, and where they stood and where they’re going.

But, a part of him wasn’t bothered with the silence. Someone said it was about the journey, and not the destination. Keith doesn’t know who said that, or how right they were. He still doesn’t know, and maybe it will always be a series of ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I’m not sure’. Is anything and anyone ever sure?

“I’m not sure, yet.” The irony wasn’t lost on Keith, and he turned to Shiro. “Maybe soon, but it’s up to them, right? Not us?”

Shiro didn’t answer as he faced the window, and contemplated. Suddenly, Keith is brought back to that time — so long ago, and if he counted the numbers in his head and twisted a few others, he can almost say it was half a life ago. He was suddenly nine, and he was sitting on the foyer steps with Shiro next to him, and they were facing the greyed-out skies with the summer storms in the distance.

He remembered it starkly, because Shiro had a look of serious contemplation on his face, and it was one of the few times he ever looked that way — the way he did now.

“I know where Adam is.” He suddenly blurted out, and Keith didn’t jump, but he did set the plate down. He hasn’t heard that name in a really long time, not aloud, and not without his willing permission to voice it out. Keith didn’t know how to react, and waited for Shiro to continue.

The idea of Adam wasn’t so much as a sensitive topic as much as it was an unresolved one. It wasn’t that Keith hated Adam — no, he did genuinely think of Adam as a friend. But that kiss, the one that happened a year ago — and it now felt like a lifetime, to be honest — had sucker punched him so blindly and so completely that every time he thought of Adam, he thought of the kiss and he thought of the warm touch on Shiro’s skin and he thought of the cold icing his innards.

“I’ve known for a while now, but I started donating, and I can’t.” Shiro paused. Keith looked up at him. “I can’t go there anymore. It’s hard when you’ve started, when they’ve cut you open and took something out. It felt like a part of you will always be missing, and you don’t really feel you anymore.”

Keith reached out and entwined their fingers together. Shiro held on to them, tight. “I’d wake up, and a part of me wants to look for you, follow you. I guess I’ve always done that, huh? Remember, when we were kids and we ran through the fields even though I started the race? Remember Mr. Holt giving us detention and I didn’t start writing down lines until you did? I never realized it then, a part of me — a big part of me — always followed you. I always wanted to do what you do, and I wanted to go where you went. Maybe that’s why I never felt completely set with Adam — because being with him meant not being with you, and I didn’t know what that meant.”

Shiro paused, and Keith rubbed his thumb against the skin of his wrist, not knowing what to say. “You went away, and I didn’t know what to do. You were gone, and Adam was gone and I just—I didn’t know what to do. I felt lost without you. I felt like a kite drifting in the high winds, and the line that held me down, kept me to the ground — you — was gone. Adam almost became that line, for me. Almost. But you went away, and I—I drifted.”

Shiro raised his head and his free hand up, like he was gesturing to the sky. “I flew higher and higher, and the world became smaller and smaller. I could see everything, Keith. I felt like a sparrow and a robin, and a nightingale and a kite. From the skies, I could see everyone, and I could see their little heads and their little hearts and their little dreams but then I kept flying higher and higher, and the world disappeared and I was lost, alone, and there was just this big whole nothing.”

 _He should have held tighter,_ Keith thought.  _I should have held on tighter. We all should have._

“Bring me down,” Shiro asked, and his voice grew quiet as he gripped Keith’s hand tightly. “I don’t want to float away. Bring me down, Keith. Don’t let me go.”

 _Baby, never let me go._ That was how the song went, right?  _Never let me go._

* * *

There was a book, in the front compartment of his car. It was something Keith bought, out of the blue, on a day where he had been late getting to Ryou’s hospital. It had been a long drive, and the sun had beat harshly on him. A grueling summer day where even the most faint smatter of light felt like fire on his skin. He had stopped at an ice cream parlor, and had gotten himself a bottle of water when he spied the book next to an assortment of candies for sale.

“Is this for sale?” He had asked, and the woman handling the counter looked at him blankly before she noticed the book.

“Oh, that’s not ours. Some guy forgot about it a month ago. You can have it if you want it.”

Keith didn’t feel like taking it without compensation, and he felt only partly guilty — but if it had been there for a month, then the owner didn’t really care for it, though.

He read it while waiting for Ryou to finish with his medical evaluation, and he never did get to finish it. He ended at one line, and somehow, when Shiro asked him to never let him go, he recalled that one line.

* * *

Banana Yoshimoto wrote, in her book called  _Kitchen. “As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”_

* * *

The drive to Adam’s hospital wasn’t the same lonely times Keith’s done in the past, when the only thing accompanying him was the quiet repetition of his own breathing, and the whistle in his ears from old, old trees that will outlive them. Shiro settled himself on the passenger’s seat beside him, and kept a light chatter up.

There was a hand on Keith’s thigh, and it was secure and warm. Shiro always loved to touch people, but this was different. Shiro put a hand on him, as if to reassure himself that Keith was real, and that Keith wasn’t going anywhere. Shiro turned and he would fall asleep, and he would wake up, but his hand remained on Keith’s thigh — settled it there. He wouldn’t move it unless he needed to do, and the weight was a welcome respite that pushed the cold away.

Keith didn’t mind at all, though he wasn’t sure he could admit to Shiro that he wanted it there for longer than needed.

“There are cedar trees on the side, but they’re not like the ones that have red leaves. Like the ones past the stone parapets at Edo. These are thicker, shorter but their leaves branch out into the road, and it’s like the sky is made of green.” Keith described, keeping a hand on the steering wheel while the other rested on top of Shiro’s, joined atop his thigh. Shiro didn’t say anything — he never usually did — but he kept his head turned to Keith, and if his eyes were still there, Keith would feel their warm gaze on the side of his face. He’d turn and find Shiro already looking at him.

But his eyes were no longer there. Still, Keith felt like he was under gentle scrutiny, and he turned to Shiro and gave him a smile. “I know the sky is clear, though. Not a single cloud in sight, but the way the light cuts through the leaves, it’s beautiful. The way it breaks into so many colors and there’s this softness to it, like it won’t hurt you when you walk into it. There are birds on the branches, and they’re asleep, they’re not singing, and it’s so quiet that you can almost make yourself believe you’re the only person in the world.”

“You’re not, though.” Shiro commented, after a long while. “You’re not the only person in the world.”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, turning the car slowly in a curve. “You’re here with me.”

“Good.” Shiro’s thumb pressed into his thigh. “Take me with you, wherever you have to go.”

The radio chose that moment to stutter, and Shiro jumped in his seat, and Keith snickered at him. Soft guitar strumming reached his ears, and a warm voice crooned.

 _And I will go if you ask me to,_  
 _I will stay if you dare._  
 _If I go, I’m goin’ crazy,_ _  
_let my darlin’ take me there.

* * *

Shiro was asleep in the car — once someone started being a donor, they didn’t have the same energy they used to have. Keith’s had to get used a lot to Shiro falling asleep more and more often, and it was unlike the way he was. Shiro always woke up first, and Keith followed.

Now, it seemed like Keith had taken the lead — and ran farther than any of his two other friends had. Friends. Huh. Was Shiro a friend? Yes, he was — but, somehow, the word fell short of what Shiro meant to him, and how much Keith’s life has been defined by him.

He didn’t have a term for that — for what encapsulated Shiro’s importance to him. Shiro was just...his Shiro.

His Shiro — that sounded more right, in his head.

Keith parked the car, and eyed the hospital in the distance. The walls were grey, and stony, and the white doors didn’t move. He didn’t leave the car, or turn it out. He kept the key in, and he kept the AC going and he didn’t wake Shiro, not yet.

He gripped the wheel tight, and he continued to look at the doors and maybe what? Hope beyond hope for them to open? The person he talked to, on the phone, had been Adam’s carer, had warned that Adam was barely lucid most days, and that she couldn’t promise him to be awake when Keith and Shiro arrived.

Still, there was nothing to lose in going, and eighteen made Keith realize that the losses far outweighed the gains, and in a time-limited game, he can only make sure that he spent what time he had with those who mattered to him.

The doors shifted, and a figure came out. He was tall, lanky, and he had a walking stick in one hand, and Keith felt his throat tighten. He would recognize the pale hair and fair skin, and those glasses, anywhere.

Slowly, Keith opened the door, and he walked out into the parking lot, and he watched Adam slowly make his way down. His carer was behind him, slowly, watching his ward make his way down. Adam shook his head, refusing help as he looked to Keith—

He took a step, and another, and Adam never looked away, his walking stick echoing loudly against the asphalt. Keith met him half-way, and caught him as he fell into his arms.

Keith never realized, then, how light Adam was, or how he smelled exactly like Edo. He never really thought about it, the specifics of what made Adam, just that he was a fixture in his memory and his idea of what Edo had been, the same way his closeness with Shiro had been another line in a long line of tiny little lines that kept his world up. Somehow, when Keith held him, he didn’t think of people as selfish, and he didn’t think of their short lives, and he didn’t think of fairness.

Suddenly, Keith was thirteen, and there was nothing wrong with the world at all.

* * *

Shiro wakened, moments later, and Adam ambled up his side of the car. He took one look at Shiro’s face, and suddenly all he blubbered were repetitions of ‘I’m sorry’.

Shiro smiled sadly, and reached up to pull Adam close. Keith was in the driver’s seat, and Shiro’s hand was warm on his thigh. He looked up at Adam, and Adam was looking at him, and it just stood to reason — Shiro was the one who held them all together.

* * *

Keith didn’t know where exactly it was that he stopped the car, but it was somewhere near Adam’s hospital. He couldn’t be away for long, but moments like these were precious, and too rare enough. There was an oak tree, a few yards away, and the grass blades were not too terribly tall. If Keith could imagine the mountains in the distance were absent, and if he imagined the greyed-out clouds lingering like summer storms constantly drifting, he could almost imagine he was back in Edo House.

Keith took hold of Adam’s free hand as he walked forward with his walking stick, and his other hand was around Shiro’s, making sure he didn’t slip. It was slow, and a year ago they would have gotten to that oak tree a lot faster than they did now, but it didn’t matter. Keith cherished every second.

The wind was gentle as it carried over the plains, and it rustled the leaves in the trees. Keith looked up at the sky, and it glanced back, blue and calm.

“Here we go,” Adam said — voice low, the way it was now — and he slowly sat himself on the grass. It took a bit of time, trying to avoid collapsing into the dirt while maintaining his grip on the walking stick. Keith walked into the shade after him, leading Shiro in.

The earth was soft underneath him, and the grass blades didn’t cut at his skin. He wore boots, and they couldn't carve through it. Still, the way the wind rustled and the scent of earth filtered in, he can almost imagine it was another day in the gardens of Edo.

There were no ‘how are you’s’ between them. Keith thought that such a question would have been too gauche and crude, not after the year that had gone. Those were questions for people, for those had lives to set out and plan. Keith didn’t ask it, and didn’t say anything about it. They were words not for castaways and cutouts, but for those who were threaded into the way things were like yellow thread up the seam of his pants.

It was quiet between them, all three of them, and somehow, that fit. Somehow, the quiet whistling of the wind and the grass blades didn’t bother him, and even though they’ve spent so long without contact or communication, it didn’t really matter now.

Maybe, if their lives had been a lot less stringent and a lot less decided, he would have said something.

Maybe, if he had been given more freedom to say the things he wanted to say, do the things he wanted to do and given the choices he never had, he may have said something.

Because words didn’t always mean what they meant, and some were said to hurt and others said to cover the truth.

And, perhaps, a part of Keith was comforted by this — because the silence between all three of them had never been awkward. He wondered, if that part of him that was comforted by this, had known, long ago, what was to happen. If someone had asked Keith about this a month ago, he would have no response ready for it, because he would have never imagined such a thing possible.

Sitting here, all three of them, on the grass blades, and under the shade of the old oak tree, it would almost feel like he was thirteen, and they were passing around a Walkman exchanged for a token, listening to Gregory Alan Isakov.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, later. Keith turned to him, Shiro’s head on his shoulder. Keith looked at his friend’s eyes through the glasses, watched the hazel glinting in between the lens. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” He asked, and Adam took a while to search his eyes, and they rested on Shiro sleeping against him.

“I’m sorry for doing what I did.” Adam said, and Keith kept quiet. “I’m sorry for taking him away from you.”

“You didn’t,” Keith answered, a bit too honestly. “He never left my mind, not once. I lied to myself, told myself that it was just some passing delusion, but it wasn’t. Everything I did, it was because I had him in mind.”

“So did I,” Adam confessed, scratching at the nametag around his wrist. “I was jealous. Jealous of you. You had the one thing I didn’t, and it was him. You had a best friend, someone you could confide and trust in, and I had no one. It didn’t feel fair, I didn’t feel fair. It’s funny how you think about stuff like that now, when you realize that a lot more things were worse, a lot more unfair.”

The confession was unexpected, but Keith couldn’t find it in him to be angry, or to feel betrayed. He didn’t feel aggravated, or sickened. He didn’t feel used, knowing that Adam looked at him and thought his friendship with Shiro as a calculation. Keith knew anger, and he knew irritation but he didn’t feel either of those things.

Maybe he would have, but a year can put someone through grinder and not come out fine on the other side. Keith’s faced a lot more things that were a lot more complicated, a lot more calculating, and a lot more painful.

Still, the confession — the admission of guilt and error. Somehow, something inside Keith snapped back to its original position.

“You were lonely.” Keith said, and Adam looked away from Shiro, and at him. “You were lonely, and you took a risk and you made a calculation and you got what you wanted, but you were still lonely, weren’t you?”

“Aren’t we all lonely?” Adam retorted, and he leaned against the tree, looking up at the sky. “We’re made, not born. We’re put in this world, and we’re cut open and we’re harvested like cattle and when we complete, we’re thrown away. It’s a lonely life, I think. A very lonely life. I just wanted to get most of what I could from it.”

He looked down and at Keith. “But our friendship was real, and what I felt for Shiro was real. That wasn’t a lie, and that wasn’t a calculation. It was more real to me than this pathetic fantasy of deferral I had made in my head.”

“What fantasy?” Keith asked, reaching forward to grab his hand. Adam stared at it for a long time before turning to the fields. “If you looked long enough, it almost seemed like Edo could be there, beyond that line.”

Keith agreed, having revisited the same thought so many times, too many times. Adam breathed out noisily. “What was the potluck for? Why did they have us spend a year to create something and give it to Mrs. Haggar? What was its purpose?”

Keith didn’t open his mouth and answer. Adam asked questions, but they were questions that didn’t need answers. He let the other continue. “You remember what Ulaz and Thace asked, a year ago, before we found my Possible? About a deferral? Remember how they’ve heard of deferrals, and that if they can prove they loved each other enough, that they loved each other real enough, they can get a year to spend it together?”

Keith nodded, unsure of where Adam was going with it. “We both know that no such rumor happened, and that we never heard of it even in Edo, but I’ve always wondered. Why did Mrs. H get all those things? Why did they have us make something for so long and take it? We know she never threw it away, she had them in boxes.”

“What are you saying, Adam?” He asked, wanting to get to the bottom of Adam’s line of questioning. Hazel eyes turned to his, and to Shiro. “What if those potluck creations were a way to see — if we loved enough. What if deferrals were real, and maybe if we can just prove to people that we are real, that we can love, maybe we can have that.”

“A year for us.” Keith looked down, and felt Shiro move. He didn’t ask if he heard everything, he was sure Shiro did. “What if you’re wrong, Adam?”

Adam was silent, and his hair swayed in the wind. “What if I’m not? What do we have to lose? We’ve lost already, right from the start. What’s so wrong with trying to win a little?”

_What’s so wrong with trying for more time?_

* * *

Adam completed, a week later. The news reached them another week later, however. The donor system didn’t really care for letting old schoolmates know the passing of someone who had been a big part of their lives. Keith didn’t ask how Adam died, it was always the same thing — organ failure. They wouldn’t be allowed to keep the remains, of course. The body no longer contained the friend that Keith never had the time to experience, and whatever was left of Adam would be given to the medical community — for the doctors and the bioengineers to prod, and dissect and study.

Keith only held Shiro, and Shiro held him tighter.

Was this how loss went? The tumbling, and the holding, and the reassuring that they were still there — in the physical — and that they’ve not stopped being there? Is this how it goes for people, real people?

DId humans — real ones — did they hold each other when a loved one passes on? DId people shed tears and wiped them off cheeks and told each other that it was okay, that he went in peace?

Keith could have hampered a guess, or he could have asked someone about it, but for that moment, he felt like he knew the answer. Loss was everything, and maybe it wasn’t about what you are and more on what you’ve gained that had gone.

He thought of himself a cat, like the one in Natsume Sōseki’s book — and he watched it all happen from the sidelines, and he wondered to himself: are people always this selfish? Is this what set humans from animals, and is this what set them from the others?

If that were the case, then were they really different at all? Grief, bereavement — these were not idle concepts he didn’t recognize. He knew the feeling of loss, and he knew the feeling of breathing on the days where it almost seemed impossible to. Was that any different to a mother who had to bury her child? Or to a brother who had to say goodbye to his?

Sometimes, the questions are so muddled that he would forget the facts. Sometimes, the moments rushed by so fast that it felt like a trainwreck trying to hold on to their ends, and he’d find himself chasing sunsets that forever evaded him. He’d often forget that he was not a person born with choice, or that he was born. No, he was made, and he had a purpose. He didn’t get to have the options to choose how things went. His life revolved around hallways, with beginnings and ends and no divergents.

Alas, facts — remembered or not, were still facts.

And it was a fact that he was going to lose Shiro.

* * *

Before Adam completed, he had thrust a piece of paper into Keith’s hand. He looked at Keith, eyes burning with emotion. “Find her. Do it for me, for us, for the rest of us who never had a choice.”

“I want to do it.” Shiro decided, and Keith nodded, even though a part of him despaired of it ever being true. “What can we show her, Shiro? How do we prove what we don’t have?”

Shiro turned to him. “I do have it, Keith. I know. I loved you. I  _love_ you. This is real. I am real. We are real.”

Keith gripped his hand tight. He didn’t voice out his fears, didn’t voice out the resounding fact that they can’t love, that they’re not made of love, and they’re not made from love.

But a part of him was hopeful, and a part of him wanted to see that — wanted the world to see that. He may not be able to love, and he may not know what love was but Shiro did, and if it could give him more time, give Keith more time with him, nothing else was above that.

“Okay.” Keith acquiesced.

Shiro raised his hand and kissed his knuckles. “Okay.”

* * *

He helped Shiro dress. It wasn’t too difficult to find a shop that rented out suits, especially cheap ones. He smoothed the lapels, and the shoulders and took a step to look at Shiro.

He looked good, no, Keith corrected himself. He looked beautiful. He was dressed in a dark suit, and a white dress shirt. Keith had helped him comb his hair back, and he was not unlike the business men they sometimes passed by. He looked like a different man, especially without the hospital gown.

“I have one more thing to bring,” Shiro added, as Keith readied the bag and what else he needed with him. Keith asked him what it was, and Shiro pointed to the end table that he had never opened before. There was only a single item, inside. A small sketchbook.

He knew that sketchbook, though — it was  _his._ One of the few things he didn’t bring with him to the Colony.

“Shiro.” Keith started, and Shiro shook his head.

“Please, if we show it to her, maybe it would prove that we’re real.” He asked, and Keith wanted to refuse.

“Shiro, none of my drawings stood out. They were just purposeless scribbles and half-finished sketches. They weren’t important.” He pleaded, but Shiro bit his lip. He was quiet, for a lengthy period of time, before he gestured for Keith to open it.

“Last page. When my first carer told me that I would be donating my eyes in a month’s time, I tried to finish that as soon as possible. I couldn’t go through the operation if I didn’t finish that. I didn’t sleep for a few days to finish that.”

Keith glanced at the book, and slowly thumbed through the pages. He ignored his own childhood sketches, and all the random doodles he had done when the classes got too wordy and he didn’t have the energy to follow. He got to the last part, where there was only image.

It was a charcoal sketch, done lovingly on the paper. It wasn’t professional, by any means, but Keith was neither a professional or a critic. No, it was done painstakingly, and he could see the lines where Shiro’s hand shook, and see the parts where he guessed Shiro had been about to stop and give up. But the lines that followed were bolder, thicker, more determined — like Shiro had reminded himself of what he was doing, how important it was, because the lines that followed were unlike those before it. They eclipsed the ones before, and even then, they were done carefully — each stroke precious.

Sometimes, Keith got too rowdy and haphazard with his sketches. Sometimes, he got mechanical about it.

He saw none of that here, but that was just the tip of the iceberg because what he was looking at wasn’t just a drawing.

Keith was looking at himself.

“I didn’t want to forget. I didn’t want to forget how you looked like.” Shiro admitted. “And if I turned the page around and felt the strokes on the back, the raised lines, I could make myself remember all those little things that were you, and even if I gave my sight away — even if I’d never see another thing again — at least I can still somehow see you.

* * *

The townhouse seemed modest — the walls were stone, and the windows were plain-looking. The steps up the front door were weathered, and old, and the mahogany panel seemed as if it had to stand against rain and hail far longer than necessary.

It was a few hours until sunset, and a few older people walked past. A child on a bike laughed as she chased her dog. There was a kite in the air, and a boy kept his line long. Shiro didn’t see any of it, but he held Keith’s hand as they knocked on the front door.

It was like any other day — almost like any other day — but the sketchbook in his grasp felt both as heavy as the world, and as light as rain.

“It’ll be okay.” Shiro assured him, and that tight-lipped smile and his combed back hair made Keith’s heart shift so hard that he thought it might pop out. Somehow, he felt like he didn’t need a blue whale’s heart anymore. Somehow, the size of it lodged in his chest felt right.

The door opened, and Keith turned, and found himself on the receiving end of a gaze he never expected to see.

“Mr. Holt?” He blurted out, and he felt Shiro step forward. The man before them was Mr. Holt, but he looked older — ancient. His hair had long gone entirely grey, silver, and his face had aged a lot, and he looked tired. He looked like a grandfather, his thoughts whispered, a man on the cusp of life, at the end of it.

Mr. Holt looked at him, then to Shiro, and then his eyes fell to the sketchbook in his hand. He didn’t say anything yet, only eyed them like he was remembering, and he was noting.

“Matt?” A voice called out, from inside. A woman’s voice — elderly. “Who’s at the door?”

Mr. Holt didn’t say anything, simply stared at them. Keith opened his mouth, probably to say something that would make him remember who they were, but he had a feeling — no, more than a feeling, a fact — that Mr. Holt knew.

He didn’t say anything at all, simply stepped aside and let them in.

“Matt?” The voice called out again. Mr. Holt swallowed, and cleared his throat.

“There are students, Mrs. Haggar. From Edo.”

Keith and Shiro stepped in, and Keith looked around, at the little odds and bits on the tables and the cabinets. There were a lot of things around, and at first glance, it almost seemed cluttered. Except they were arranged carefully, lovingly, even though most of the items looked as if made from garbage.

There was a long cloth hung from the back, and there were garish colors on it. A small book, of sorts, stood by the top of the cabinet, but it was handwritten, and it didn’t age well. A few sketches, and drawings on cheap paper — not entirely finished, and not well-done at all.

There was a series of dolls, made in macrame and paper. A painting was set next to it, and Keith stilled, eyes widening. He knew that painting.

He turned to find Mr. Holt staring at him, and his lips moved soundlessly.

“Edo?” The voice came again, and Keith ripped his eyes from his former guardian and turned to the hallway where an old woman entered, a mechanical sound following her appearance. It was Mrs. H — infinitely older — and in a motorized wheelchair. Mr. Holt turned from them and went to her, standing behind her.

She looked at Keith, and then Shiro at the back, and the painting Keith had been fascinated with.

“I liked that most.” Mrs. H commented, and her voice was low but it carried through the entire room. Keith didn’t turn to face the painting,  _his_ painting where he gave form to Shiro Skywalker. “It wasn’t an inspired work, but it was lovely. It makes me feel better, knowing the two of you are still the closest of companions.”

It then slowly dawned on Keith, as he looked around — all the odd bits and ends, the weird creations. They were the potluck, from the students of Edo House. That was Lance’s work, and Hunk’s and Pidge’s. Adam’s was there, in a cabinet, and Shiro on the shelf below it.

“What is—?” He stopped himself, unable to continue. Mr. Holt didn’t say anything, and Mrs. H only looked at them with her hazel eyes — they still looked sharp, even after all this time. Keith had to remind himself that only a few short years passed, for them, and not the lifetime it had been for Keith and for Shiro.

“Perhaps we should talk in the living room.” Mrs. H offered, and she turned to Mr. Holt. He pulled her wheelchair and pushed it back in. “I suspect you have questions.”

Shiro hadn’t said a single word, but he nodded when Keith turned to him, as if knowing already. He slowly lead them inside, where there were more of the potluck from the previous years. Mr. Holt and Mrs. H settled on one side of the couches, and Keith slowly entered, gripping Shiro’s hand tight.

Their linked hands didn’t escape Mrs. H’s gaze. “Please sit.”

Keith helped Shiro settle himself first, and when Keith took his seat, Shiro pulled him close. There was a lot of space on the couch, but Keith was fine with his side and his leg pressed against the other, their linked hands in between them.

Mrs. H scrutinized them, for that moment. She didn’t say anything, her silver hair still impeccably tied into a bun. She wasn’t wearing her purple blouse, but she had a white dress on. There was a smile on her lips, polite, but it never reached her eyes.

“What do you have to show for me?” It was still odd, hearing her say so many words when she’s never really said anything to them. All those years. Her voice was elderly, that was accurate, but it was light — cordial — as if talking to old friends.

Keith felt Shiro’s hand twitch in his. He cleared his throat, before speaking. “I—we came here to ask—about the deferral. We heard, well, that if we can show you that—that, well.”

Mrs. H continued to stare at Keith, even as Shiro spoke. He didn’t look away, but held tighter to the hand in his. The sketchbook was on his lap, and it took a while for Keith to realize Shiro had fallen silent.

“I think it’s better if show her.” He said, turning to Shiro. The shoulders pressed against him were tense, and it took a bit for Shiro to nod. Keith slowly eased his hold on Shiro’s hand and helped him grab the book. Whatever it was they were doing, they were doing it together. He won’t let Shiro do this alone.

“Mrs. Haggar, if you could—” Shiro started, and he thumbed through the pages fast. It was as if he had memorized all of it, every single one, because even though he could not see, he knew where to go and he ended at the page before the end where he held the book out to her.

Keith helped him put it up. Mrs. H turned her gaze from them to the painting, and Mr. Holt reached forward to take it from their hands. His fingers were cold, Keith noted, and he never looked away.

“If you just—I mean—that proves we’re real, right?” Shiro asked. His hand went back to holding Keith’s tightly, and Keith could feel the stutter in his voice before he actually heard it. Mr. Holt looked up from the book and at then, Mrs. H continued to look at him in the eye. “This proves we’re real, right? Th-that I love him? This is  _me_ , this is me. Right?”

Mrs. H didn’t say anything, not yet. She gazed at Shiro and turned back to Keith, and that smile on her face seemed etched. It felt like she didn’t even  _know_ she had a smile on it.

The silence that followed was thick, and ominous. Keith couldn’t even hear his own breathing, or his heartbeat and Shiro beside him grew so still that he almost seemed like stone. The silence was a conclusion to Shiro’s words, and it said everything Mrs. H needed to say without a single word being spoken.

“Why?” Keith asked, unable to hold himself. His voice was unfamiliar, as if it had come from something other than his own body. “Why do you have all this here, then?”

Shiro’s hand had grown cold, and he started to tremble. Keith held on to him, as tightly as he could. He wasn’t letting go.

“If-If not to know our  _souls,_ then—why?” Keith asked. “Why do you have my painting on the wall? Why do you have Lance’s banner hanging from the ceiling? Why do you have Pidge’s book on the cabinet? What’s the point of it all if not to know our souls?”

He turned to Mr. Holt, who had looked away and stared at the ground. “Why? Why bother teaching us? Why bother making us  _live_ if not to know what’s in our hearts? What was the  _fucking_ point?”

His hand was trembling, and he felt Shiro’s thumb bite into his skin but he didn’t care. Mrs. H and Mr. Holt continued to keep their silence, and Mrs. H’s tawny gaze refused to let up. The words burst out of him before Keith could hold it in. “Tell us! We deserve to know! We deserve to know, don’t we? Before you cut us open and take out what’s inside and throw us away like garbage — we deserve to know!”

There was a hitch, and Mr. Holt raised a hand to hold himself. There was a hand on his mouth, as if trying to keep the words in. Mrs. H took a deep breath, before settling her hands on her lap. The light glinted off the window, and it made her eyes look faint gold.

Mrs. H stilled, like every bone and muscle in her body had stretched, taut. Then, she laughed. She laughed and she laughed, and she laughed so loud that it echoed within the confines of the house. Her shrieking laughter jumped all over the place, and it ran about until turn into a wheezing cackle that sounded like a sob.

“It was not because we wanted to know what’s in your hearts and in your souls.” She finally spoke. She raised a hand, as if gesturing for them to understand. “It was because we wanted to show the world that you were like us, that you could be treated like us.”

She coughed, and she looked as if ready to lecture — her eyes flashing. “We all had high hopes for this project, you see. I remember you, I remember you clearly. Keith, was it? Ah, yes, Keith. Well, _Keith,_ we had high hopes for this project — Matt and I. We were very optimistic, but we never lost touch with reality, didn’t we, Matt?”

A hand on his old guardian, Mrs. H turned to them again, and she raised a finger when Keith opened his mouth to speak. “I’m sure what we’ll say won’t be welcome to you, but it is what it is. It happened so long ago, but I can remember it — the first time man created a clone. I believe it made such a spill in the headlines, didn’t it, Matty? I’m not quite sure, but it swept through the nation like a craze. Everyone wanted to know, everyone wanted to see what it could do. You can’t believe how much people wanted such a thing — how much in stock the idea was!”

Mrs. H paused a bit, smiling to herself, like she was reminiscing. Keith could only stare at her, watched as something akin to happiness glanced through her eyes. “Then, of course, someone thought of an idea.  _If a clone can be made, then an exact copy of perfectly functioning organs can be developed, too!_ The world was a lot more humane, those days. We were idealists — always wanting the God-righteous path. But science couldn’t progress far, and these cloned organs expired without that innate homeostasis in every human being! So, we were back to clones, and you can guess what it meant.”

“I,” Keith started, but unable to finish, unable to react to such blatant honesty from her. Mrs. H didn’t seem fazed, not one bit.

“Back then, clones — or  _students_ , as we would call you, as if that would change the very nature of you creatures — were the breakthrough of medicine. There was a big demand of organs, in so many countries and so many institutions. It didn’t matter where they came from, it didn’t matter how they were made — it was just there were enough and people needed it. It kept going, and going and going, and when the time came for people ask questions, to ask how it happened — well, it was simply too late. You can’t reverse a process centuries in the making.”

Mr. Holt raised a hand to cover his eyes, and his shoulders shook but Keith didn’t see that. He didn’t see any of it. Mrs. H’s voice carried over, like through a great distance. “There were  _arguments,_ and yes, dear, there certainly were, but when the world started asking about...  _students_ , it was simply too late. How can you expect a world to go back to a time where cancer  _cannot_ be cured?”

Keith stilled, and so did Shiro. Mrs. H continued, looking around at every potluck they’ve made. “You all were fortunate to have grown up in Edo House. You learned to live, for a little while, before you had to do what you were made to do. But this idea of, what, a  _deferral_? Even at the height of our influence we could not have granted that. Still, you were terribly lucky to be with Edo.”

“Lucky?” Keith rasped, unbelievingly. “You think we’re  _lucky?_ ”

Mrs. H didn’t falter in her response. “Of course. Look at you, you lived, and you were educated, and you were cultured. Before this project, the donation programme was inherently barbaric — you were nothing more than shadowy projects raised in test tubes and frozen solid until use. In Edo, you had a home. In Edo, you were surrounded by those like you, and you all acted like you were children — and you had your dreams and your friendships and little songs. You see, Edo was a project. It was decades worth of research and experiments, and a belief put to the test.”

She turned to Mr. Holt and gripped his hand. “Edo was set out to prove that, raised in a humane and gentle environment, you could be like us, that creatures like you who looked like us but were not us  _were_ the same as us. It was a test, to prove that you weren’t just slabs of meat and blood and organs. No, it was our heartfelt belief that you were worthy — to be like us.”

She shifted her hands again. “This is why we have the potluck. We have you make creations, anything you can think of, for a whole year. We believed that what you made could prove what you had in you — and that you were real, that you were not just cattle. If we could make ourselves believe that, then we can make the world believe that.”

Mrs. H took a deep breath, and she looked  _forlorn_ in that moment. It was the first emotion Keith saw in her eyes. “We failed. Not just, not just Edo. All the other schools, the other houses like Edo — we failed. The world took one look at you, at all the years we spent building and raising you, and said ‘no’. The world didn’t want to be reminded as to where the organs came from, or how the donation programme worked. They failed, their experiments failed and we had hoped on you. All of you. Edo was the culmination of a thousand-year research, and if you failed, then we finally have our answer: that you were, are, and will never be real. You will never have souls because you never had them. We will have our conclusion — that it was wrong, to give you the time and the years to live when you would fail. That is what our research told us: you have no other purpose than that.”

She took off her glasses, and looked at her hands. “You poor, poor creatures.”

* * *

The long drive back to the hospital was quiet. No music played from the radio, no birds chirped from the trees, and no wind rustled the leaves. Even Keith’s breathing had no sound — as if the entire world had held back its noise, allowed itself to be silent, in respect for a revelation that was not shocking. Keith looked at the road ahead, at the evening sky and the starless expanse beyond.

Shiro was silent beside him, and the hand on his thigh was cold — as cold as Keith’s insides. His face was away from him, turned to the window to his right. He hadn’t said a single word since their exit from Mrs. H’s townhouse.

They continue down the road, and Keith kept his gaze both on it and Shiro, growing worried with every second as Shiro refused to make a sound. He was so still, he was almost like a statue — or, maybe that was what he was aiming for. If he became so still, as still as stone, then he would never have to hurt again.

Hadn’t the world hurt him enough? Hurt  _them_ enough?”

“Can you please stop the car, I need you to stop the car.” Shiro suddenly muttered and Keith jumped, turning to him concern for a bit. He nodded, even though Shiro couldn’t see him, slowing the car down until he could park on the side. The road was empty, and there was a small chance of anyone using this road — it was too far-off from the main roads.

He pulled the handbrake up but didn’t turn the engine down. Shiro removed his hand from Keith’s thigh and started to unlock the door. Keith watched him, unable to stop him — he tried to reach out to Shiro, but he turned his back on Keith and stepped out of the door.

Keith exited from his side, terrified and worried about what Shiro would do.

He managed to get himself to a stand, still in the suit they rented from the city. He was trembling from head to foot, and he panted like he came from running. Maybe he had. Maybe they all had.  Maybe they've been running, running from the reality that their fate was escapable. Maybe they've allowed themselves to believe in the hope that they could change things.

Because that was the only thing to describe the disappointment and the crushing weight in his chest.

Shiro walked forward, one shaky foot after the other, and there were times he seemed like he was about to fall. He kept his ground, made it a few feet away from the car.

The headlights illuminated him, and Keith watched the outline of his back — his shoulders and his hair, and the half-curled, half-bent arch to him, as if the weight he had been carrying was finally too much for him.

Shiro looked up to the sky — the starless, dark sky — and he screamed.

At first, Keith had stilled so hard and he wondered if there had been a maniac hiding in the shrubs. It wasn’t until the third or fourth scream that he realized the sound came from Shiro.

Suddenly, it was like watching a caricature of a man. He watched Shiro look up the night sky and scream, all muscles tense and his hands curled upward like a gesture of desperation, and his hoarse cracked and faltered but he continued screaming. He screamed and he screamed, and Keith couldn’t move because it was like—

It was like Shiro was screaming for all the things, all the hopes and the wishes dashed on the ground. It was like Shiro was screaming for all the people, the students — the clones — like them who couldn’t scream, who didn’t have a voice, and were barely more than science experiments for a world that refused to see them. He screamed for Adam, who was desperate for a life he was never given. He screamed for Allura, who hoped upon hope, even when they cut her open and left her like carcass on the road.

He screamed for Keith, who had to watch all the people he ever cared for complete and who couldn’t  _feel_ , who couldn’t  _scream_ , who couldn’t hold on to anything but the nothing inside him.

Then, Keith found himself up in Shiro’s space, and his arms around his chest, and Shiro’s hands gripped him tight, so painfully tight, and they held each other as every scream echoed out of Shiro like a cry of a dying beast. Keith held him close, so painfully close — so completely close that if he could, he would have encased Shiro in all of him, away from all the prying eyes and the greedy hands and the scalpels waiting to cut them open.

If they held on tight, to each other, maybe they’ll never be swept away into the night.

* * *

Shiro’s fingers were on his face, and on his skin. Keith didn’t say anything, entwined as they were, where their limbs tangled, unable to tell which one began and which one ended.

They were bare, and nothing but skin kept them apart from each other. In this little room where they felt like they were in the stomach of a big monster, Keith only kept his eyes open and on Shiro’s fingers, felt them glide across his skin, every dip and cranny and nook.

The white walls turned into sunlit meadows, the gurney beneath them turned into a field of flowers, as yellow as the sun burning itself into Keith’s eyes, and the hospital blanket over them was a gentle warm breeze, keeping the cold at bay.

“I love you,” Shiro whispered, and his voice was feather-light in this little meadow they’ve made in their dreams. “They tell us that we don’t know love, that we’re not capable of it, but I know I do. I know I could, and I have — for so long. It just took me until now to realize that.”

Keith nodded, even when Shiro couldn’t see it — because he knows, Keith knows Shiro knew. Shiro smiled at him, heartrendingly fragile. “I had loved, and I loved. I was here and they can’t take that away from me. I loved you, and that’s my mark. I’m not a faceless ghost, I’m not a shadow. I had loved. I loved you my whole life.”

He leaned close, and Keith’s eyes shut automatically. He feels the warmth of Shiro’s breath, and the softness of his lips and the gentleness that always lined his being. The hand on his cheek, and the lips against his and Keith’s fingers in his hair — somehow the warmth against his skin grew stronger, and the scent of the dandelions swept through him and the rustle of the leaves danced in his ears.

He felt infinitely younger, and the world was light and snow and new rain and the softness of a taupe-lined smile.

* * *

Shiro completed on the last day of winter. Keith’s last memory of him was in the operating room of the hospital. He had been outside, behind the glass, and he watched the aide push his gurney inside. Before they pushed him in, Shiro had grabbed his hand and laid a kiss on his knuckle, like a promise. A promise that he would never let go — and Keith knew that he would also keep that promise.

The aide pushed the gurney under the operating light, and Shiro was bathed in fluorescent. He turned to Keith, looking past the masked surgeon, and didn’t look away, hairnet crinkling. Keith looked back, and raised a hand — pressed against the glass.

Shiro had raised his, too, as if reaching for him. Even though he couldn’t see, he always knew, didn’t he? No matter how long, a part of him always knew Keith.

They placed the oxygen mask on him, and Keith didn’t look away, not even when Shiro fell asleep — his very last. Somehow, he didn’t see the surgeon cut the gown open and slice a line down Shiro’s belly. Somehow, he didn’t see the skin pulled back with clamps, and he didn’t see the surgeon sifting through Shiro’s intestines roughly — like it wasn’t a person in his hands, who had his hopes and his dreams and his wishes.

No, Keith didn’t see all of that — even when it happened so vividly before him.

What Keith saw was a day, when he was five, and it was a Monday, and Edo House had her assembly, and Mr. Iverson was at the front and he had congratulated them.

 _We welcome you to the new year, students. We welcome you, our hopes and wishes for the donation programme._ Mr. Iverson had said, and they all had applauded, proud as they were to begin their donations, even if it weren’t to start for another thirteen years.

Keith had clapped, like so many of his classmates, and he turned —

Shiro was clapping, as well, cheering along. Then, he stopped, and he turned to look at Keith. The cheer died, but the smile on his face stayed.

The first time Shiro had given him that tight-lipped smile — that one smile, just for Keith. For a moment, he wanted time to pause. He wanted that scene to freeze forever, and he would have given anything to route back what he had lost.

Keith reminded himself that he was lucky to have any time with him at all.

* * *

It’s been two weeks since Keith’s lost him. It’s been two weeks since that day, and Keith stood there — feet in the water — and the open sea before him. A part of him wondered at how weird time was — as the memory of Shiro almost like a lifetime ago. He would believe that this was where all the things he’s lost washed up, among the sand and the water.

He has his notice now. His first donation was set to start in a month.

He was eighteen, and he had finally come of age. The last years of his life, all the way to the beginning — he had not expected things to happen the way they did. But, isn’t that how life is? It shattered your expectations, and placed you in deep surprise?

The waters were receding, and the sand trailed in their wake. A cold breeze swept through the plains, bringing a sting to Keith’s eyes. He blinked, bringing a hand to rub the itch away. In the distance, seabirds flew – crying out, tittering – their calls carried over the ebb and flow, riding along the surface waves crashing against the shoreline. Salt danced in the wind and kissed his skin.

He felt dry and sweaty, the salt air stuck to his skin and on his clothes. He didn’t really mind, though, as he continued to gaze across the expanse of the ocean. The caws of the sea gulls continued to circle about him, over the waves and the distant road behind him.

Keith watched the waves rushing from the distance, and he felt the water against his face and he closed his eyes. He imagined Shiro’s bright smile, eclipsing even the cold, and he thought of Adam and he thought of Allura and he thought of Ryou. He thought of Edo House, and all his classmates. He thought of the Mr. Holt and his shaking shoulders, and Mrs. H and her cold gaze. He thought of the lyrics to  _If I Go, I’m Goin’_ and he thought of endless meadows and sunlit fields, and houses in the middle of infinite green grass.

Then, from his throat — no, from somewhere in his center, somewhere he couldn’t describe — a scream came rushing out. He screamed and he screamed and he screamed, he screamed so loud his throat  _burned_ and he screamed so loud tears ran down his face.

He screamed into the sky and the sun and all the colors dispersed into intense reds and yellows and blues. He screamed for all that he felt — and the big, great empty nothing that had plagued him _vanished_ and he felt everything he never thought he could feel.

He felt joy and he felt sadness, and he felt exhaustion and irritation, he felt pride and he felt loss. He screamed out frustration, and he screamed out terror. Hope, desire and want — they all echoed in every broken decibel that his throat strained to produce.

Then a painful, mournful, wonderful warmth burst into fire inside him and—

Oh,  _God,_ he felt love. He felt love and he screamed love and he realized, in that moment when all the emotions that have been chained inside him burst free like a cavalcade, he had been feeling love. He had been loved, and he felt love and he had  _loved._

Oh, God, he had loved. He had loved so hard and he had loved so strongly and he had loved so completely that it eclipsed everything else: all the sadness, the pain and the terror, and the fear. All this time he was afraid that he was never capable of love and that it was impossible for him to love, but he had. He had loved.

He had loved Ryou, and he had loved Allura and he had loved Adam, and he had loved Shiro. He loved Shiro.

The epiphany broke through his vocal cords and Keith fell to his knees, felt the water seep into his pants as his screams broke into gasps. He had loved him. He had loved him so hard.

He wasn’t an empty nothing. He wasn’t a big, black hole floating in an ocean of nothing. No, he was the furthest thing from that. He had  _loved._ He loved.

In spite of what they’ll do to him, and no matter how many times they cut him open and heave his guts out like garbage, they would not be able to deny — he would not be able to deny that he had felt  _love._

He was real, and he felt and he hurt and he loved.

Somehow, the distance to the horizon didn’t matter anymore.

He gazed at it, with hot tears down his cheeks, and maybe it was the blurriness or the realization that he had spent his whole life loving that caused it — but, there in the horizon, a shape would appear. It would start out small, and Keith would wait and watched as it grew bigger and bigger as it got closer and closer, and he would see that it was Shiro.

Then, Allura would be behind him, and Adam, and Ryou, and all his guardians. The seas that lapped at his feet would turn into grass and the white clouds would become summer storms that lingered in the distance. Slowly, Edo House would form in the back, where her walls were sturdy and upright, her floors were firm, her bricks neatly met and her doors sensibly shut. Silence laid steadily against her wood and the ghosts of all those who walked there — who walked together.

He’ll wonder, then, if their lives were any different from those they saved. One way, or the other, clone or not, they all complete. He’d stand there and he’d finally understand. To be told and not told, to be told and not made to understand — but, now, he did. A collection of all the little victories he’s had all this time, combined into one and maybe that — in spite of everything — was worth everything.

Perhaps, his soul, if there really was a soul in his body, would fly up to the clouds and join Shiro’s, to where the soul of the man he loved waited, and maybe there won’t be a need for donations and carers in that place. Still, what he knew then and what he know now was simple, and what he was about to do, even simpler:

He’d stand, and smile, and he’d go to where he was supposed to be.

And, Keith thought, perhaps, all along, they’ve never really understood what they’ve lived through, or felt as if they’ve had enough time.

  
**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Book References: I'd also recommend these books, too. They're all on my favorites list!  
> [Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9557.Sputnik_Sweetheart)  
> [Ruth Ozeki - A Tale for the Time Being](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15811545-a-tale-for-the-time-being)  
> [Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50144.Kitchen)  
> [Banana Yoshimoto - Goodbye Tsugumi](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50146.Goodbye_Tsugumi)  
> [Han Kang - Human Acts](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30091914-human-acts)  
> [Natsume Sōseki - I Am A Cat](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62772.I_Am_a_Cat)
> 
> Album Reference:  
> [Gregory Alan Isakov - This Empty Northern Hemisphere](https://www.amazon.com/Empty-Northern-Hemisphere-Gregory-Isakov/dp/B002APNGJ0)
> 
> I'd tag this story as a coming of age AU because we see Keith develop from a naive and inexperienced teenager to being a carer and what that entailed. Ishiguro is famed for his books ending on a melancholic note, since [物の哀れ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware) ("Mono no aware" or "the pathos of all things") is heavily depicted here. This is a story of impermanence, and the realization of what it meant to be alive. Though Keith will undoubtedly die young, I wanted to depict the little victories here - the fact that he ended his story, resolved in the belief that he had loved and he knew how to love and that he had lived his life the best way he can.
> 
> I called their school Edo, in reference to Tokyo's old name and the notion of it being a 'floating world' (which, I believe, went swimmingly with the theme of transience and impermanence in this story).
> 
> Let me know what you think!
> 
> Come scream at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spaceboykenny) and on [Tumblr](https://spaceboykenny.tumblr.com/)!


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